Happy Workforce

Late 2009 saw ELBA launch the Newham “Real Apprentice” project, in partnership with Newham Council, reflecting what both strive to achieve: East London is a place where people want to live, work and enjoy their life as a resident in a striving, thriving and changing borough.

The project, managed by Dalila Hammadi and Spencer Kendall, has supported over 100 Newham residents into the employment market in its pilot stage. The largest cohort of 19 candidates successfully passed their formal interviews and joined the Council as Front Office Customer Service Assistants. Six months on, all 19 candidates passed probation and are still employed by the Council.

Life through a lens

Recently I have been very impressed by LCH.Clearnet. The company has been investing in photography projects with Hackney schools for two year’s now, supporting excellence within the arts, developing citizenship and also strengthening broader academic skills among pupils within the borough. The 22nd of June saw the culmination of their first Advanced Photography Project through Mine, a professional group exhibition of the work of seven promising photographers from Haggerston School. The exhibition was held at Free Form Art Trust’s Hothouse.

CREATE goes live

As you may have read under the news section of our website, Deutsche Bank has just been announced as the main sponsor of 2010 CREATE festival. I must say a big thank you to Eileen Taylor and Kate Cavelle at Deutsche Bank and our very own Culture project manager, Hazel Durrant, for working so hard to make this happen. We are thrilled that Deutsche Bank is supporting such an important legacy for East London.

Art for the masses

We are really excited about this year’s CREATE art award, the largest participatory art award in the UK, sponsored by Bank of America Merrill Lynch. Roam were the winners this year and describe themselves as a “mobile village green preservation society”. A specially commissioned Roam vehicle will ramble across the 5 Olympic host boroughs hosting rural adventures such as fishing, wild swimming, birdwatching, foraging, nature trails, map-making, photography and field recording.

Cooking with gas

Joe Crook, one of our Tower Hamlets Project Managers, has been doing some fantastic work of late forging relationships between caterers at our corporate partners and community cooking initiatives in the borough. Activities have included tours for young catering trainees and chefs with learning disabilities around corporate kitchens. This has helped inspire them and has also given them invaluable first hand advice and guidance from the professionals.

Bowled over

I was very interested in a quote I read recently by Benjamin Zander, an inspirational speaker I had the pleasure of seeing at a Deutsche Bank conference last year.

“This is the moment — this is the most important moment right now. Which is: we are about contribution. That’s what our job is. It’s not about impressing people. It’s not about getting the next job. It’s about contributing something.”