Laburnum Street Party

The annual Laburnum Street Party took place last weekend and was a resounding success.

Hackney Independent ran an Independent Kids Cinema event, staffed a stall with our newsletters and a special information leaflet and provided the majority of stewards for the day.

Other activities included music and dance, a bouncy castle, clowns for kids and Laburnum Boat Club ran canal trips.

The street party is a genuine community festival organised by people living in the Laburnum Street area, which started last year to celebrate the 100th anniversary of the opening of Haggerston Pool.

The pool was closed by Hackney Council in 2000 at which time it was promised that it would be reopened in months. It remains closed to this day and an aim of the fun day is to raise the profile of the pool and support the campaign for its reopening.

Although it has widespread support in the community, Hackney Council seemed to be doing its best to sabotage the event.

Official council newspaper Hackney Today was distributed a week before the event with a front page piece stating that the funday would take place on the Saturday rather than the Sunday.

The council also removed any mention of the pool campaign and portrayed the event as just “a good day out” with no political content.

Hackney Independent’s Carl Taylor said “We proud to be involved with this event. No wonder the Council were ashamed to mention the pool given their track record of closing community facilities in the area.”