community/cultural
Penoyre & Prasad, 2006
35-47 Bethnal Green Road, E1 6LA
Community arts hub staging music, dance and spoken word performance, art shows and film screenings.
Bethnal Green
Shoreditch High Street
388
The Rich Mix is an exciting arts centre, which brings together a diversity of cultures and creative disciplines.
It celebrates the contribution made by successive generations of immigrants to the economic and cultural life of London. To create a home for this innovative project, we extended and transformed a derelict garment factory building in East London.
The centre includes a three-screen cinema, performance and exhibition spaces, music studios, workspaces for creative businesses, a rooftop function room and a café; the café is the spatial and social centre of Rich Mix. The space is analogous to a small town square – highly visible and easily accessible directly from Bethnal Green Road. The cinema is housed in a distinctive extension to the rear of building, clad in sky-reflecting aluminium.
The building features a series of double height spaces, formed by cutting away parts of the floor slabs. One of these acts as the entrance square, the lively hub of the centre.
It’s an open secret that posh people educated at selective and private schools, inheriting family wealth and connections enjoy disproportionate success in a sector still riddled with barriers and prejudices that penalise working class people.
It's not that every architecture worker is rich – a junior designer pulling overtime is probably working for less than the minimum wage – but research suggests that half of all architects come from families where at least one parent held a management or professional career.
It doesn’t have to be this way! A more inclusive sector, able to appreciate and champion working class voices could not only give young people from less privileged backgrounds the same opportunities as their middle class peers, but could better connect with the wider public and the community it serves.
At this Accelerate Debate, our speakers will celebrate a working class hero of theirs who deserves to be better known and celebrated in the industry. Join us at RichMix to hear about some remarkable working class designers and interrogate the wider question of class in architecture.
For this event we are charing £12 for tickets and £8 for concessions. This is to try and reduce the issue of drop-outs when ticketed events are free. All funds raised will be used to cover the costs of staging the event with any surplus invested in Open City's educational programmes supporting children and young people from under-represented communities.
Drop in
civic, art in the public realm, community/cultural, entertainment, mixed use, theatre, concert/performance space
Once one of the grandest civic buildings in London and now a great arts venue, the Grade II listed Shoreditch Town Hall boasts many spaces, from the Victorian grandeur of the Assembly Hall to the intimate warren of untouched basement rooms.
Caesar Augustus Long, 1866
Drop in / Guided tour
museum, community/cultural, art in the public realm, gallery
The Gilbert & George Centre was originally established as a registered charity by the artist in 2009 with the objective to advance the education of the public in the arts, and generally to advance the arts, architecture, heritage and culture for the benefit of the public.
SIRS Architects, 2022
