The wheatfields of Hackney
Hackney is as gritty and urban as it gets. Tatty secondhand shops, mechanics’ yards in the backstreets, tower blocks and grim terraces. Fields of Athenrye it ain’t.
Except that this summer, there’s wheat growing in the fields off Dalston Lane.
It’s part of the Barbican’s exhibition ‘Radical Nature’ and it’s intended to highlight the divergence between our urban culture and the rural hinterland that feeds it. (There’s also interesting economics behind it – the value of the land is so much greater than the value of what we can grow on it that it’s become, in a way, a purely speculative currency – we can’t afford to eat.)
The Dalston Mill has taken over disused railway tracks to create a wheatfield, a mill and bakery.
There are frequent events (the full list is on the). Bake your own currency – which you can then spend in the Mill. African cooking, theatre and drumming. Cake decorating and talks about architecture. It all seems slightly mad and hugely varied – and almost all the events are free. There’s a bar open in the evenings too, making this not just an art exhibition but potentially your new local pub for a month.
Where: off Dalston Lane (Dalston Kingsland railway station)
When: 2-10 pm every day till 6 August
How much: free
Photo by Meena Kadri on
