London Gypsies and Travellers is taking part in this year’s Hackney Unites Festival on Saturday 17th June at Hackney Community College in Shoreditch from 11.30-17.00h. There will be over 80 community groups, stalls, food, a fashion show, music performances and exhibitions which you are invited to join.
To celebrate the diversity and contributions of the London’s Gypsy and Traveller community, LGT will be holding a discussion about the daily lives of Gypsies and Travellers in Hackney, the joys and challenges, the resilience of the community.
We will hear from members of the community who put their faces behind our #WeAreAllSoManyThings campaign, which highlights the different roles people have and how their identities are obscured when we focus only on them being Gypsies or Travellers. They will share their personal motivation of why they joined the campaign and what they hope for the future. Among them will be Mena Mongan, pictured.
We will also be showing our exhibition on the history of the Gypsy and Travellers community living and working in London for over 100 years. This follows the story of families settling in London in the late 19th and early 20th century and shows families gathering at traditional stopping places such as Folly Lane in Waltham Forest and Bonny Downs in East Ham.
The exhibition follows the various campaigns for culturally appropriate housing, more pitches and sites up until the present day, with images from the last protest against The Housing Bill at City Hall in 2016.
The Hackney Unites Festival will be a day to celebrate the diversity which continues to make Hackney a great place to live for all cultures.
You can learn more about the event and register online, and spread the word by joining in the Thunderclap on social media.
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