“I call it an urban resort,” said Doug Acton, head of sales and marketing at Berkeley Group and the man responsible for driving the success of its Poplar Riverside development.
“It’s close to nature and it has facilities such as a gym, a pool, a spa, a cinema room, shops, bars and restaurants.
“It could almost be a self-contained little town, but it’s open to everyone – somewhere to get away from the hustle and bustle of Canary Wharf.”
To describe Poplar Riverside as ‘tucked away’ is both accurate and somehow inappropriate.
Officially launched in June last year, the development covers a 20-acre site, will take around two decades to build and will see about 2,800 homes delivered in the East End.
This is major regeneration by Berkeley division St William – a project that will also provide a new 2.5-acre public park, a couple of bridges across the Rvier Lea, 500m of riverside walkway, 90,000sq ft of commercial space. The list goes on and on.
But take the 20-minute stroll over to the site from Canary Wharf to the soft tranquillity of Leven Road on a sunny day and you’ll find it’s something of an oasis, albeit one where the concrete superstructures of its first phase have quietly risen.
The waters of the Lea flow lazily past as cranes perform their slow-motion ballet. There’s something happening here and it’s only just begun.
Head of sales and marketing at Berkeley Group, Doug Acton
“When people come here, they’re really excited about the regeneration story – they can see it’s a part of this massive growth corridor that’s happening along the river,” said Doug.
“They can see the potential with our investment in things like the bridges – how that improves the connectivity to Canning Town station.
“The challenge for us is getting more people to come here. Once they see it, they know it really is a transformation, that it’s a step change.”
And “step” is the right word, because Poplar Riverside is a scheme of many levels.
There are the public parks and walkways themselves and, of course, the river, all framing the buildings.
Then there are raised podium gardens for residents, underground parking and private balconies lining the pointed elevations of the brick-clad blocks.
It’s partly the attraction of these features that have seen buyers purchase about 100 of the 156 homes at the first building in the first phase of Poplar Riverside – Calico House.
The next to go on sale will be Porter House, which is right on the river and is expected to hit the market in July.
That will be followed by Bowline House and Sisal House, which all together complete the first phase with 643 properties.
Construction of the first phase of Poplar Riverside
“With Porter House we’ll be launching three-bedroom homes for the first time to go alongside the studios, one and two-bedroom homes available,” said Doug.
“It’s right next to the Lea so many will overlook the river and enjoy views across the London skyline.
“They will also benefit from the Leven Banks park, which includes a children’s playground, so it’s an exciting block to release.
“One of the things we’re really good at as a company, having learnt from projects like Royal Arsenal Riverside in Woolwich and Kidbrooke Village in Greenwich, is that you would never know, as a resident, that construction is going on.
“We commit to the landscape nice and early, not as an afterthought, so people moving in can enjoy it.
A range of properties are available at the development
“We’re also constantly speaking to our residents to get feedback and find out what they want and what they don’t.
“One of the things we’re creating at this development is the Riverside Club – 16,000sq ft of facilities that will help foster community here.”
Laid out over two floors that includes a co-working space, a cinema room, meeting rooms and a games room as well as a residents’ lounge, a spa, steam room, sauna, salt room and a 20m swimming pool.
“We also have The Great Room,” said Doug, who was recruited by Berkeley from the luxury hotel industry to help it deliver the kinds of facilities normally found at such resorts at its residential property developments.
“It’s somewhere to work, play and meet just so people can have that strong sense of community.
“We’re really keen to create that feeling of togetherness and that goes for families as well – it’s not just for adults.”
All apartments at Poplar Riverside feature outdoor space
The homes themselves feature floor-to-ceiling windows, underfloor heating, Bosch appliances in the kitchens and Italian terrazzo worktops.
All have some form of outdoor space and the two-bedroom show home features a jack and jill main bathroom, effectively offering both bedrooms en suite facilities.
“There’s mood lighting in the bathrooms and good storage comes as standard,” said Doug.
“There’s even a nod to the golden age of industry with the taps and that’s a theme we’ve carried throughout the properties.
“The principal bedroom has built-in wardrobes and there’s an option to have those in the second bedroom too.
“We know storage is really important, so we’ve also put full-height cupboards in the kitchens to maximise the use of space.”
Properties currently on sale at Poplar Riverside start at £410,000. The earliest completions are expected in the second half of this year.
The Poplar Riverside sales and marketing suite, which includes a two-bedroom show apartment, is open for viewings.
An artist’s impression of open space at Poplar Riverside
All head chefs want to make great food. But Salvatore Coco is literally willing to go the extra 332 miles.
That’s how far it is from his job as executive head chef at The Gantry hotel in Stratford to Wageningen University in the Netherlands.
“I recently discovered a professor there who had grown vanilla – one of the first times that’s successfully been done in Europe,” said Salvatore.
“There are a lot of problems with the vanilla trade – it’s a money business. So when I heard about this I fell in love because it is such a unique product.
“That’s why I’ll be travelling to Holland to bring back a bit of the vanilla to use at The Gantry.
“It isn’t on sale because it’s just for research, but I persuaded the professor to give me some. It’s like gold for me.”
The Italian native will be using his foreign treasure to create an ice cream and a dark chocolate brownie dish that will feature on the new spring menu at Union Social, the hotel’s first-floor restaurant.
But he has also been looking much closer to home for his inspiration.
“Just in front of the hotel is a small set of seven beehives in East Village run by the locals,” said the 36-year-old.
“They produce a very small quantity of honey, only about 30 jars a year and I was able to meet them and get half.
“It’s a beautiful product created just a few steps away and tastes amazing.
“I have used it to create a Greek-inspired dessert, which uses filo pastry, ricotta cheese, cinnamon, orange, all the ingredients that were available during the time of Homer, which pair perfectly with this local honey.”
Union Social at The Gantry
Like many Italians, Salvatore grew up in the kitchen watching the family matriarch cook.
“As a kid I would always spend time close to my grandma and was fascinated seeing her make focaccia and pasta,” he said.
“The first dish she let me cook was prawn spaghetti for my grandfather. It was so bad, tough and salty.”
By the age of 13, however, he was working in a professional kitchen at a local restaurant in his native Sicily, doing everything from pot washing to working the grill.
Next came a tourist resort where the 18-year-old Salvatore was in at the deep end.
“It had room service and three restaurants, but I was so passionate about my job that after a couple of months they left me running the kitchen by myself,” he said.
“Looking back, I don’t know how I did it, but I survived and it didn’t put me off.”
Stints at hotelier school and as a chef de partie in a Sheraton hotel followed, before he landed in London and was seduced by the capital’s eclectic culture.
“The plan was to stay a couple of years, but I never left and I became a British citizen in 2019 and don’t think I will ever go back,” he said.
“You get such a variety of food here. Places like France, Italy, Spain are focused on their own food – but here there are all sorts of cuisines. For a chef, it is like a candy shop.”
The Gantry’s food reflects Salvatore’s travels
His big break came when he bagged the role of head chef at the Pestana Hotel in Chelsea.
“But when the pandemic hit, it closed and Salvatore was out of a job. He returned to his roots, taking a job at Park Lane Kitchen, a small deli and rotisserie near where he used to live in Battersea.
“It was really strange but kind of nice, like going back to when I started out 20 years ago,” said Salvatore.
“The owner didn’t know I was a head chef. I just started working and after a week he was really impressed so I told him.
“It was a funny moment. It wasn’t stressful at all working there and I loved it.”
But when The Gantry came calling, he could not resist the chance to unleash his creative side.
“The general manager told me he didn’t want to have the normal international food other hotels have, like the club sandwich and Caesar salad,” said Salvatore.
“He wanted the menu to be personal to me and be created with fresh ingredients on a daily basis.
“That’s hard to find in the hotel business and, while it was a big challenge, the menu is based on my travels, which is something I’m really passionate about so it was easy, in a way.”
A dessert at Union Social
Diners at Union Social can expect dishes such as a dessert made with crystallised violet petals Salvatore found while visiting Toulouse, a Jack-In-The-Green salad based on a mythological figure he discovered in Scotland and a slow-roasted shoulder of lamb from Kent.
“I’m not competitive with other chefs at all,” said Salvatore.
“I just do my own thing. Of course, the food has to be tasty but it is about sustainability and the exclusivity of the food.
“It has to have a story behind it because I’m very interested in culture and history. I call it food with a soul.
“I don’t want to just make food with a Michelin Star which looks pretty and tastes nice but has no character.
“I’m not a fan of fancy decorations, just simple food that has value behind it. That’s really important and the main reason behind my cooking.”
Like a surgeon, Salvatore said he is “always on call” and has moved 10 minutes away from the hotel in Stratford in case of any kitchen emergencies.
“My private life is zero at the moment,” he said.
“But if you don’t have a passion for this job you can’t do it because it is so many hours.
“You cannot just be selfish and narrow-minded because otherwise, you don’t go very far. But you need to explore your own creativity and, in a way, be single-minded.
“I remember taking a boat in Thailand and the wife of the captain was cooking some noodles on board.
“I was amazed at how easy it was for her to combine ingredients and make something that tasted amazing.
“Sometimes you go to restaurants with a full brigade of chefs and the food doesn’t taste that good.
“I’ll always remember that because it really made me think a lot about how food is passion.”
Black swan” is the image that comes to mind when trying to sum up Jonathan Fren.
That’s because the entrepreneur appears calm on the surface but there’s a sense he’s working busily beneath.
The founder of Canning Town co-working space Keyboards & Dreams, is something of an anomaly.
When we sit down to chat, the mellow-voiced hipster seems exactly the sort of person who would own an easygoing office complex in Caxton Works, where members are surrounded by plants and stripped back decor.
He said it all came about “by accident” but I’m not sure that’s the right word.
“I randomly came across the development about three years ago and was interested,” said Jonathan. “I liked the vibe of what they were doing with independent businesses and I liked the architecture of the space.
“I thought it would be a cool place to have a community. It’s a very residential area and, with Keyboards & Dreams, I wanted to create a living room that people could go to when they’re not working from home.”
This is not the first business the 32-year-old has owned. It isn’t even the second or third.
Jonathan has never totted up the companies he’s run, but I have. It’s 11.
The first, Magivend, he started when he was 10 after seeing some sweet machines for sale at Exchange & Mart.
“My parents were always entrepreneurs, and supported me,” said the Northampton native. “I bought three machines and put them in our local health club — they paid for themselves in a month, so I kept buying more and putting them around town.”
By the age of 12, he had 32. By 13 he was “bored” and bought tyre sealant franchise Nopunctures.
Part of the workspace at Caxton Works
Despite its success, nine months later he gave it up as “the need to be face-to-face with businesses as a 13-year-old was difficult”.
There was no stopping him now though – at 14 he left school with no formal qualifications and became the youngest person to attend the Open University, studying robotics under a special arrangement with the council.
“I wasn’t allowed to ever meet my tutors as staff weren’t vetted for working with under-18s,” said Jonathan.
“And I only spent two weeks actually preparing for the exams as I was too busy learning about the internet.”
He started taking apart websites and learning how they worked, building CaribGo, a revolutionary webmail client but said he was beaten to the punch by Gmail.
At 16, he moved to Barbados to run a watersports business, but within months realised his passion lay in cyberspace.
“I’d gained some great contacts online, and spent the next few years travelling and building things for clients like Barclays Bank, General Motors, and Oxfam,” he said.
“None of them knew my age – it was my most closely guarded secret. But of course I’d have told them if they’d ever asked.”
The rest of his CV includes co-founding identity management service ProfileBuilder, face-to-face networking platform PowerMeeter, fashion designer finder Osmoda and magazine It’s Rude To Stare.
Some only lasted months but by 2016 he seemed to have found a more secure footing in Clerkenwell, spending four years running tech company Rebel Minds.
Exhausted yet? So was Jonathan.
Keyboards And Dreams is located at Caxton Works in Canning Town
“By then I was 25 and I was finding it all really stressful,” he said.
“The company I had created had become something so different from what I started.
“I ended up with 20 employees in central London doing things I just didn’t believe in. We ended up being an agency just making websites for clients.
“I wanted to do super awesome things and have products that I really believed in. I tried to pivot it first, but I was in this really bad place and ultimately decided to shut it down.”
He said making all his staff redundant was “the hardest thing I’ve ever done in my working life”.
The phoenix from the flames was his office block nestled among the jewellers in Hatton Garden.
During the five years the tech company existed, Jonathan had acquired more floors of the building and the first Keyboards & Dreams evolved naturally.
The site can cater for up to 95 members
“We had a really cool space and I’d always had lots of friends interested in it,” said Jonathan.
“Initially I just rented it to them for their tech companies and then to more and more people and eventually it became this great co-working space.”
He managed the building remotely for a few years while travelling through Paris, Amsterdam, Berlin and San Francisco and had no intention of launching a second site. But then he discovered Canning Town.
“I didn’t know much about the history of the area when I started, but now I can see that in three or four years it is going to really go up,” said Jonathan.
“At the moment we are a little bit in sleepy mode, but so much has happened just in the year we have been at Caxton Works.”
These days Jonathan lives in Poland with his Yoga instructor girlfriend, but moved back to the capital to get the unit ready for launch in November 2020.
He said: “We had a waiting list of about 60 people but then Covid rules changed and we ended up with 10 members. It was a lot less people than I expected, but I didn’t want it to be an empty building, I wanted it to be used.”
Today, the site has about 25 members and space for another 95.
“The concept is to create a really modular space that is not just about working but enabling people to do whatever they’re doing,” he said.
“We have podcast spaces, private desks, open-plan spaces, storage, meeting rooms, a photography area, lots of different spaces to enable people to do lots of different things. I’m super optimistic.
“Throughout Covid we have had lots of people drop out, but also people joined. Clerkenwell has been used throughout the pandemic.
“With Canning Town we have had nowhere near the number of people walk through the doors I expected, but I think that’s part of being a new place in a new area.”
So was this really all by accident? Like the black swan, it seems more like effort rewarded.
Professionally he rose to prominence as an expert tiler and mosaic artist working at the very top of the interiors profession.
That culminated in Grace Of London, which creates decorative baths inlaid with precious metals, Swarovski crystals and the like, for those whose luxury bathing habits far exceed the means of most – think up to £100k a tub. With me so far? Good.
Robert met photographer and artist Anne-Marie Bickerton when she came to shoot one of his baths with a ballerina in it. Inspired, she created a painting based on the images she’d taken, then came up with the idea of cutting it into pieces to share the art.
In collaboration with Robert, they decided to take that idea – calling it Sentiment – and involve other artists, creating the nucleus of what’s become the Bickerton-Grace Gallery.
Its physical space, based at Stirling Eco on The Highway, has an ever-evolving display of work by the 100 artists in the Sentiment project, including Anne-Marie herself.
From March 25-April 8, however, it will host a joint exhibition of work by painter Lisa Izquierdo and some of Robert’s baths.
Robert and Lisa will display their work together – image Matt Grayson
Anne-Marie said: “With the Sentiment collection, an artist sends us a work, which we divide into 1,000 pieces, mount on 24-carat gold leaf and stitch a gold thread through – that’s all about connection.
“They can then be purchased, potentially connecting 100,000 people with this installation. We also invite the artists to exhibit in our space and it’s an incredibly diverse group – we have classical artists, street art, acrylic painters, pretty much everything.
“Then you have all the collaborations I do with Robert and the pieces in the Sentiment collection themselves.”
The electric bikes aren’t just a backdrop. Stirling Eco prides itself on offering artistic makeovers for its rides, some in collaboration with Sentiment artists.
Much of the space, which is free to visit, is adorned with artworks large and small.
Anne-Marie, for example, uses the walls to create vanishing pieces that are painted over shortly after creation, with digital versions deleted and only limited edition prints surviving.
It’s an environment that feels less about selling two-wheelers and more about unbridled creativity.
“Running a gallery is really interesting,” said Anne-Marie. “I get so inspired by the other artists that are on board and it’s a bit of a love project really, because I get connected to every one of them.
“Art is an emotional response – it grabs you or it doesn’t, and it’s very personal.
“It’s like a fire in your tummy – I really like that but I can’t explain it, like a buzz of energy – it’s a nice feeling.
“The idea of Sentiment is that if you see a piece by an artist but can’t afford it, you can still buy a piece of something they’ve created.
“With Lisa, her pieces are very dramatic, beautiful big oil paintings, and they tie in really nicely with what Robert makes – they complement each other without clashing and that’s why we’ve brought these two artists together.
“Visitors will see their work together, but also work by other artists as well.”
“I did an apprenticeship as a ceramic floor tiler and I’ve always had an artistic background, which set me aside from my peers,” said Robert.
“I pretty much won every award that was available as a City and Guilds apprentice, and by the age of 25 I was abroad fixing mosaic domes in palaces.
“I’d worked for pretty much all the royal families in the world.
“Towards the end of my tiling career, I was getting older and I was trying to think how I might use my brain rather than my brawn.
“The idea to create the baths came when a client asked me what colour she should paint her bath – it was in a £60,000 bathroom and I just thought I could create something that would turn the interior from a stunning one to a spectacular place.
The exhibition will take place at Stirling Eco – image Matt Grayson
“She painted her bath in the end, but I went back to my workshop and thought about creating some samples.
“Then, with the the help of top refurbishment firm Grangewood, I launched them with a week-long exhibition.
“They cost from about £50,000 but the customer is getting 35 years of experience and something that’s unique and hand-cut. I’ve made some for more than £100,000. The last one I did had over 40,000 pieces of glass.
“The bathtubs are a good match with Lisa’s art because her work is astonishing, really beautiful and also the kind of piece you could include as part of an interior design.
“It’s subtle, the colours are well-chosen and the textures are beautiful.
“I’ve worked with some of the finest interior designers in the world and, to be really good in that world, you have to understand how light falls, shapes and colours what’s in a room.
“One of the most important things is to understand how to place and decorate with pieces of art themselves.
“I’ve always been artistic and creative and this is an extension of that.”
Robert will show three baths at Bickerton-Grace Gallery as part of the exhibition, including the black and white Harlequin
Lisa, pictured with one of her paintings – image Matt Grayson
Lili – The words of Lisa Izquierdo
“The pieces I’ll be showing at the exhibition will be the from my Essence Of Woman collection,” said Lisa, who lives and works near Manchester.
“There are no faces, it’s more about texture, movement and dynamic. I’ve always had an interest in art. When I was very young – aged six – I would draw these elfin-like, elongated silhouettes with wings.
“I think I was inspired by strong women in my life who brought me up, like my mum and my sister.
“I have six collections, all on different subjects, but painting these images was a real way to escape when I was struggling – painting is meditative, a lovely, expressive way to cocoon myself in my little studio and put it all on canvas.
“Everyone goes through bad times and you wouldn’t appreciate the good without that.
“It was tough in my 20s, I started modelling when I was 13 and at 15 I went to Madrid on a contract and then Tokyo for a year. On the one hand I got to travel the world and it taught me a lot of lessons in life.
Lisa will be showing pieces from her Essence Of Woman series – image Matt Grayson
“But I was in an environment at a very young age that was horrible and it scarred me. That’s why I don’t paint faces, because it’s drilled into you that you need to be a certain way.
“There were eating disorders, drug addictions – you see it all – it was exploitation of very young girls. Even now at 46, I have to be OK with eating.
“Those experiences are part of what makes me the artist I am today.
“For me art is the release. I get really lost in painting. Sometimes I can be in the studio until four or five in the morning.
“I’ll go home, sleep and go back to the studio and discover what I’ve created, whether it’s an abstract piece or a painting of a man or a woman.
“I hope people feel uplifted when they see my work. I want it to be thought-provoking too and to feel some positive energy – it’s a bit hippy, but then that’s what I am.”
Lisa, who signs her work Lili, will show a selection of her oil paintings at the exhibition.
When I was a young child, my parents gave me an old typewriter to play with. I loved hitting the keys, hearing that distinctive, hypnotic clacking sound, twisting the knob that made the roller revolve.
But I couldn’t really comprehend what it was for. Even though this was the 1980s, by the time I came of age to make marks on paper, computer keyboards had already replaced the old mechanical machines with their inky ribbons and staccato rhythms. Fun for a kid – a relic of a bygone age, perhaps – but nothing more.
It’s fortunate James Cook didn’t have that experience.
While studying A-Level art in 2014, he developed an interest in inventive ways to make marks, drawn to David Hockney’s iPad paintings.
“Then I came across Paul Smith, who had used typewriters,” said James. “What really caught my attention was his story.
“Born in 1921, he suffered with cerebral palsy his whole life. At the age of 11, his parents gave him a typewriter because he couldn’t hold a pencil.
“But, instead of writing, he ended up creating drawings, which was his passion. He only learnt to speak and walk as an adult, but at the age of 11 he was already creating these amazing pictures – drawings of the Mona Lisa and it fascinated me that it was even possible to do such a thing.
“Immediately after I had read about him, I started trawling around charity shops trying to find a typewriter – at first without much success.
“Then an elderly couple in one of the shops overheard that I was looking for a typewriter and told me that they had one belonging to the man’s late mother.
“It had been sitting in the attic for about 40 years, not being used, and they suggested that I could come round and collect it.”
After a few squirts of WD40, James got the mid 1950s Oliver Courier going and began to experiment.
“I was lucky I picked that typewriter up and that I didn’t give up straight away,” he said. “As time has gone on, I’ve discovered that there are some models that just don’t work for this kind of work.
“But what I had was a very expensive, very mechanically precise machine. If this hadn’t been the case I might not have stuck with it.”
They include landscapes and portraits
Perseverance paid off however and James now makes his living generating work on his collection of 40 typewriters, painstakingly using them to tap out artwork, either from life or photographs.
It’s exacting work, with drawings typically taking between a week and a month to complete.
“Usually the typewriters have 44 keys, so I have those parameters to work within and choosing the characters to use is one of the most interesting parts of making these drawings,” said James.
“I’ve been doing this for about seven years now, mostly part-time, and more recently full-time, and I’ve learnt by trial and error which particular character works.
“If I’m drawing a portrait, and I need to recreate someone’s skin complexion, most people want to be seen in the best light, so even skin tones require a character that has a large surface area, like the ‘@’ symbol.
“That’s also good for shading, which can be achieved by hitting the key more softly.
“If someone has dimples or freckles, then I might use some asterisks, because it’s a much sharper mark, whereas the underscore is a perfect shape for drawing horizontal lines in an architectural drawing, like the bottom of a window sill, or doing brickwork.
“Achieving curves is very difficult, especially if you’re working across multiple sheets, because they all have to line up.
“Typewriters inherently want to go from left to right so they’re great for straight lines, but not so good for verticals and curves.
“So what I’m doing is using my left hand to ever so slightly twist the paragraph lever by a minuscule amount while I’m typing to create a curve, like the roof of The O2, for example.
“I can’t think of any other way of drawing that requires you to use both hands in this way. Your right hand is on the keys and your left hand is responsible for making sure you stamp that mark on a very precise point.
“Once it’s been made that’s it, there’s no way of undoing it – I won’t use Tippex so mistakes become part of the drawing.
Every drawing is made by painstakingly typing to make marks
From April 1-10, the largest ever exhibition of James’ work ever gathered together is set to be held at Trinity Buoy Wharf, with many of the pieces created at the east London location in Leamouth. Entry is free.
“Visitors will see the biggest collection of my work to date,” said James.
“It’s mostly pieces from London locations, usually drawn on site with views of places like Greenwich Park, the Thames Path and Trinity Buoy Wharf itself.
“What’s also important for the work is to add a second layer of information, so the drawings are not just about piecing together various characters, they also contain concealed messages or hidden lines of text.
“I’ve often done that more recently when I’ve been working on location and I’ve spotted something, or when a thought pops into my head, especially if it’s the middle of winter.
“I did some of the drawings in January and it was pretty cold outside, so a lot of the messages are me complaining how cold it was.”
James draws many of his pieces on location
Every weekday during the exhibition, James will be hosting free workshops for those who’d like to try creating their own typewriter art.
He said: “When people look at my art, usually it’s not enough, they want to know how it’s made.
“The idea is these groups of about five will get to sit in front of a typewriter and have a go.
“It won’t be creating finished masterpieces, but hopefully we’ll have some fun and it will be a start.
“They can bring along pictures to inspire their typing or I can provide them for reference.”
Deptford Market Yard’s arches are typically filled with magic. It might be the ramshackle ephemera of Little Nan’s, the slick seafood of Sharkbait ‘N’ Swim or the wholesome cafe cuisine of Dirty Apron.
All of theses businesses pulse and buzz with the passions of the people behind them. It’s why the area draws ever increasing numbers of people seeking independent places to hang out.
It’s also why Bluethroat’s owners thought their idea could work.
Brothers Landi and Ari Mucaj had been talking about starting a business together since 2013.
“I’ve lived in Deptford since 1997 and I’ve worked in many central London bars,” said Ari.
“I started working as a kitchen porter and then got a job as a chef, which I did for about three years.
“I’d finish work about 10.30pm and then go behind the bar and wash glasses for fun. I fell in love with being behind the bar and that’s what I’ve done ever since.
“I’ve worked mostly in central London in places like the Cuckoo Club and Chinawhite and I ran the bar at Maddox for about six years.
“Every time Landi would come to see me in central London he would always say: ‘We should do this ourselves’.
“That was really my plan all along, at least for the last 10 years, trying to save up and do it.”
In 2018 Ari quit his job and teamed up with Landi, who had been in Deptford himself since 2001, to look for premises.
Guests at Bluethroat in Deptford Market Yard
“We were searching and then we thought, what better place than Deptford?” said Landi.
“We’d seen a lot of changes in the area over the years, so when we saw an opportunity here, we thought it would be the best place to build something.”
The brothers took one of the larger brick arches at Deptford Market Yard, more or less next to the train station itself, and set about doing just that.
“Instead of doing it somewhere else, we thought it’s just around the corner, we can walk home and it’s the perfect place,” said Ari.
“We found this fantastic space here – it was a shell when we got it and we’ve built it from scratch.
“It took about a year to build it – we didn’t know anything about doing that so the fact we have this location and that we’ve created it from scratch is crazy, but it feels amazing.”
Landi added: “I fell in love with it really – the whole experience of setting up a business. It’s had its ups and downs and it probably took us longer to open than most other places, but we learned a lot in the process.”
Unfortunately things didn’t go quite to plan. Just days after Bluethroat opened its doors, the first national lockdown came into force and they slammed shut.
Like many hospitality businesses, the brothers have since been riding a rollercoaster of uncertainty, most recently closing at Christmas as the responsible thing to do, despite the lack of official government direction to do so.
With restrictions lifted, however, both Ari and Landi can’t wait to run their cocktail-focused establishment unfettered.
“This is the first chance we’ve had to run in a normal market, there’s been a lot of opening and closing,” said Landi.
“Our plan remains very much the same and it’s about refining our formula.
“Firstly, we’re really passionate about our drinks, delivered with great service. We’re also a very good restaurant.
“We are a place where people can come and chill out and have some really good cocktails.”
Bluethroat also serves food
Walk into Bluethroat and that focus is unmistakeable. The bar’s shelves are laden with spirits, ready to be whipped into a multitude of alcoholic concoctions.
“This is where my brother’s experience comes in,” said Landi. “We have about 11 drinks on our menu, all of which we’ve created for Bluethroat.
“There are boozy ones and lighter drinks, some that are bitter, fruity, bitter, sweet and sour – something for every taste.
“We are constantly working on the list and evolving it, but we really enjoy asking customers what they like and then building something for them.”
Bluethroat – named for a small member of the thrush family with a distinctive blue collar and a powerful song – also develops seasonal drinks, with two of its four spring specials already in hand.
“Customers will always find something new,” said Landi. “We’re getting ready to launch one made with Haku Vodka from Japan.
“We just love the taste of this spirit, made completely from rice, and we mix that with a bergamot liqueur and blackcurrant to make a sweet drink with a hint of spiciness. We think people are really going to like it.
“The second cocktail we’ve created for our spring menu is based on whisky with a fig liqueur and mulberry syrup.
“We make pretty much all our own syrups in the bar using a range of techniques such as sous vide and hot and cold infusion.
“The drink has a creamy taste and we also infuse the whisky with violet leaf to give it a beautiful aroma when you’re drinking it.”
Ari added: “When we opened, I gave Landi a crash course and now he’s a genius behind the bar. One of our challenges since opening has been finding bartenders with experience.
“But I think local bars are taking over in terms of quality – you can find cocktails that are as good here or in places like Hackney, as you will get in Mayfair.
“I worked in central London for 20 years and the quality here is no different.
“You are seeing people who are going out locally to get this, instead of making the journey in.”
Bluethroat is locate in Deptford Market Yard
While its extensive collection of bottles, rich brown hues and speakeasy vibe mark Bluethroat out as a haven for drinkers, the brothers hope that its food offering will be a welcome surprise for those ordering.
“We change the dishes all the time, but we serve Mediterranean and modern European food,” said Landi.
“There’s always something new, but we love seafood. There are a lot of Italian influences because our chefs are from Italy.”
Ari added: “We serve a lot of fish – black cod, king prawns and salmon – and we do specials every week.
“I think people are a bit shocked that the food is as good as it is because of the way the bar looks.
“We started off serving smaller plates, but we’ve extended the menu because people wanted more food.”
The primary focus remains the liquid though, and, having worked widely on the city’s bar scene, Ari is keen to build the bar’s reputation in the capital.
He said: “Ultimately we want to be known as one of the best cocktail bars in London. That’s our ambition.
“We’re taking things slowly and we haven’t really promoted ourselves yet. We wanted to grow organically and for people to find out about us that way.”
Bluethroat is open Weds-Sun. Cocktails typically cost between £10 and £11. Small plates are £6-£11 and bigger dishes around £14.
“I got shouted at, I burnt my hand and I started work there the next day,” said James Goodchild, recalling his first experience of working in a professional kitchen.
“I’d finished school in Essex, where I lived, without many qualifications – I was a having a year out and my mum forced me to get some job interviews.
“So I went for a role as a barman because I thought it would be a nice easy one with plenty of money.
“That had gone, but they asked me if I wanted to do a shift in the kitchen, which I did to keep my mum off my back.
“But I absolutely loved it – and that’s where my career started. Now my mum is my biggest fan.”
It was the start of a journey that eventually led him to the role of head chef at rooftop members club Upstairs At The Department Store in Brixton.
Then a fresh opportunity presented itself. His colleague at the south London venue – Emilie Parker-Burrell – was leaving to become general manager of The Pearson Room in Canada Square in preparation for its post-pandemic reopening last month.
“I knew she was going to Canary Wharf anyway and I was looking to do something else,” said James.
“So I came over to see the venue – it was a blank canvas, which was very appealing, so I thought I’d give it a go.
“I’d loved working with Emilie at Upstairs and I think we work really well together.
“I’d never had a job in this part of London before or really visited it – it’s very new to me – so I was quite surprised by the number and quality of the bars and restaurants on the estate.
“The Pearson Room is owned by Third Space and we had a briefing from them, to make sure we have dishes that work for what they’re doing on the health side of things, but we’ve had pretty much free rein to do what we want in the kitchen, which is great.
“We’ve created a menu that’s a little bit more casual than some of the other venues around here, food that’s a bit more laid back, but we’ll see, over the coming months, what Canary Wharf wants from us and we’ll adapt what we do.”
Pan-roasted cod with white bean, tomato, mussel and prawn stew
Guests will find the familiar warm browns of the venue filled with the scents and flavours of James’ creativity, ranging from healthier options to more decadent temptations.
Starters (£7-£14) can all be served as mains and include the likes of seared tuna with watermelon, sesame and ginger; quinoa, mint and spring vegetable salad; and poke bowl wakame with daikon and shiso.
Larger plates (£16-£21) include dishes such as roast chicken with carrot salad and whipped Feta, foraged mushroom risotto and pan-roasted cod with white bean, tomato, mussel and prawn stew.
“Flavour is the number one thing we look at here,” said James. “It’s the reason to go out for dinner – to be hit with great big flavours – and that’s what we do throughout our menu.
“I really like simple food. When I was younger, everyone had ambitions to win Michelin stars, but the older I get, the cooking and the food become more relaxed and I think that’s a much better direction to go in.
“I want people who eat my food to be full, content and happy having experienced some bold flavours. A full restaurant, with happy customers, is success in my eyes.
“Staff play a huge role in that. The team of people I have around me is absolutely phenomenal.
“I have great faith in my colleagues. They are all outstanding chefs and we’re all on the same page in the kitchen – everyone can work on every section.
James’ poke bowl wakame with daikon and shiso
“We discuss the whole menu at the end of every session and, if we need to tweak, we do, and so it carries on.
“We never sit still – we’re always looking to be better, and hopefully that will show on the plate.
“We did an incredible number of tastings before we opened and I love the banana tarte tatin because I have a sweet tooth, but my favourite dish is the cod.
“I’ve always loved eating cassoulet – it’s a chef thing to try and get a huge amount of flavour out of it and this recipe started off as a dish we used to have for lunch in the kitchen.
“There are lots of fresh herbs in it, and lemon at the end, which is very French.
“With mussels being in season at the same time as cod, and the prawns adding a bit of luxury – we use the shells for the sauce – it’s great that it’s become a restaurant dish.
“One thing I hate is to change the whole menu on one day – it’s a recipe for chaos and disaster.
“After we’ve been open for a couple of months, then we’ll start introducing new dishes when ingredients are in season.
“We will have an ever-changing menu so when people come there will always be something new.
“It keeps the chefs on their toes as well and gives them a chance to develop their own dishes, get these on the menu and get a bit of recognition.”
A Hoist The Colours cocktail with rum and coconut
The Pearson Room’s bar has also been refreshed with a new cocktail list including beverages such as Fraisier (East London Dry gin with Fraise liquor, lemon and raspberries) and Hoist The Colours (a showstopping combination of Discarded Banana Rum, coconut syrup, pineapple juice, lime juice and kiwi).
James said while there were plenty of healthy options on the menu for those visiting Third Space, The Pearson Room was very much a separate entity.
Plans for the future include creating more dishes inspired by the venue’s wine list, bringing in a dry-ageing cabinet so guests can see the meat they will be eating and setting up an oyster bar to pair with the English fizz on offer.
The Pearson Room is now open Monday-Friday from 10am for lunch and dinner. The venue is also available to hire for events with an extensive range of food and drink options available.
James said: “You have to be approachable – we’re always happy to work with people so they get what they want.”
How do organisations best support and encourage the arts?
Having long brought art into its buildings, the natural step for Brookfield Properties was to recognise makers’ achievements with an annual prize.
The company, which co-owns Canary Wharf Group and is based at One Canada Square, teamed up with the Crafts Council to do just that, recently naming its latest winner.
“We came up with the Brookfield Properties Craft Award in 2020,” said Saff Williams, curatorial director at Brookfield.
“It came out of a collaboration with the Crafts Council. We’ve always hosted free exhibitions in our buildings – it’s part of the Brookfield experience where you have all sorts of things such as art shows, events and wellness seminars.
“I needed work for those exhibitions and people were asking why I was putting pieces in these spaces and what the decision making process was.
“I’d been having an ongoing conversation with the Crafts Council about collaborating and renting pieces from their private collection to show.
“They told me about Collect craft fair, which showcases the best works from makers in this country and internationally. So we developed the concept of a prize to be awarded to an exhibitor at the show.
“Brookfield would then acquire the winner’s works, show them in a free public exhibition and gift them back to the council’s public collection so they can be shown elsewhere.
“So that’s how it started and it’s accidentally become one of the biggest craft prizes in the UK.”
The prize is for £60,000, split between the maker and their gallery, which in Christian’s case is IntoArt – a visual arts charity based in Peckham that works with people who have learning disabilities.
“We work collaboratively with the Crafts Council to decide the winner,” said Saff. “Their curator – Annabelle Campbell – shortlists hundreds of makers at Collect – the top artists they want to add to their collection.
“Then we come up with a shortlist of five, based on work Brookfield would like to show and, after the winner is announced, we buy the work and build an exhibition.
“This year we were lucky enough to be able to go to the studios, see the artists in their space and speak to them about how they make their work, so that helped us identify a winner.
“It’s also a chance for us to talk to them about their story and define who we think has the best work from our perspective of adding to the collection.
“All of our shortlisted artists would have made incredible shows, but with Christian’s work there was such a kind of joi-de-vivre about the light and his colour – a new way of exploring screen-printing in ink.
“I remember when we went to IntoArt, we were blown away by the colour. His work is so beautiful, and he is so prolific in his desire to articulate his work in different media, in silks and also in his drawings.
“It was exciting and I got caught up in it – I thought it was exactly the kind work we should show – the kind our community and tenants would really respond to.
“Art is subjective in so many ways, but Annabelle and I thought Christian’s work was so moving and very exciting.
Christian at work at IntoArt in Peckham
“Because he does his screen-printing on silk, his pieces have this kind of movement about them.
“A lot of them are figurative works, inspired by the Ballets Russes and a lot of research he’s done at the V&A.
“There’s something about the nature of his brushstrokes, that made them feel like figures dancing.
“Even in his drawings of flowers, for example, the petals were almost falling off.
“There is something very gestural about his work. I feel so many artists try to achieve that, but he seems to do it naturally.”
Alongside Christian, makers Anthony Amoako-Attah, Dawn Bendick, Cecilia Charlton and Irina Razumovskaya were shortlisted for the 2022 award.
“What we do is often quite bold and colourful,” said Saff. “If you’ve got 9,000 or 3,000 people coming to work in a building on a particular day, then not everyone is going to like everything, but it’s so important to get art into these environments.
“In the wake of the pandemic, people’s expectations when they go to the office are so much greater now.
“At the beginning people thought it was great to work from home, but now they want to go into work because they can see friends or drop in on a pop-up exhibition opening and have a drink.
“When people hadn’t been into their offices for months and months and saw a show with work by our 2021 winner Anna Ray – so bright and vibrant – people emailed saying that seeing her pieces really helped them.”
As part of the award, Christian’s work will be shown by Brookfield Properties at 99 Bishopsgate in the City during the summer.
Ella Ritchie with Christian Ovonlen
BECOMING AN AMBASSADOR FOR EQUITY IN THE ARTS AND FOR CHARITY INTOART
Brookfield Properties Craft Award winner 2022 Christian Ovonlen makes his work in Peckham with charity IntoArt.
Director Ella Ritchie said: “I co-founded the charity with Sam Jones when we left art school. Based on our experience of volunteering with people who have learning disabilities, we really wanted to make a change because there was no resource for those people to have access to art education as adults.
“We are ultimately an alternative art school that has the same rigour you would find at an art school.
“We introduce people to materials, techniques and opportunities. Our vision really is about equity in terms of access, learning and ambition in the arts.”
Christian joined the collective in 2013 and has been developing his practice for the last nine years.
Ella said: “Most people start with us on a foundation course so they’re learning lots of different techniques, they may never have done much art – it’s very much about exploration and opportunity.
“Over this last three years Christian has taken his drawing practice into this really unique language of textiles, which I think is what has excited people.
“They’re very large scale silks that hang as though they are the drapes of theatre backdrops.
“The series he made for Collect is inspired by the Ballets Russes – the performers, the scenography and the costumes.
One of Christian’s drawings
“He starts with drawings and silk screen prints them onto silks using a very delicate dye technique.
“The resulting textiles are very light and really float in their settings.
“Everything is made by hand including the dyes he uses – he controls the vibrancy and strength of the colours and how that is translated onto the fabric.”
Ella said the prize clearly recognised Christian’s work as on a level with other makers at Collect
She said: “Winning just blew him away. It gave him a direct relationship with the other makers and galleries at Collect – he went round to talk to them as a fellow practitioner and that comes back to that equity.
“Christian is an internationally recognised maker and an ambassador for all of us and our mission to challenge the notion of who can be an artist, maker or designer.
“For me personally, I feel that’s been a long time coming. I’ve always known this work is amazing and the people we work with have such potential.
“I think when people see it, they get it and what’s great about this award is that Christian’s exhibition will be so public and so open to people.”
Croissant crumbs surround Suzie Pennington. But, when you run a cafe called Dirty Apron, a bit of mess and chaos is part of the fun.
“There was a show on at The Albany, so we’ve had loads of kids descending on us,” she said as we sit down to chat about her operation.
The 18-seater venue has been part of the Deptford Market Yard community since November 2016 – more or less when the arches first started opening up – and Its customers are very much at the heart of what the business does.
“A lot of the other vendors that opened with us were from food trucks, so were one-dish orientated,” said Suzie.
“But we’re more like a classic cafe with specials, a soup of the day and a brunch that changes as tastes change.”
Dishes draw inspiration from the season, feedback from regulars and what the local greengrocer has on offer.
“We like classics with a twist, “ said the 38-year-old.
“Not just British but European and Asian and we try to keep all our mains under £10 to make sure the cafe is affordable for the length and breadth of Deptford folk.
“We’re not faddy but, if there is a trend that looks interesting, and our customers ask for it, we will make it because we like to have a two-way relationship.
“We plan the menu around what our customers’ favourites are and speak to the regulars and see if they want anything revisited.”
The Anglo-Indian said her love of cooking started during her childhood in Essex.
“My mum cooked loads of Indian food growing up and I learned how to make lots of dishes quite young,” said Suzie.
“I was about eight when she first told me to make what I wanted from the fridge.
“She also ran a nursing home and I would hang out in the kitchen and learn how to do a lasagne or a roast.
“So I have always been around food and professional kitchens and got the interest and love from there.
“She’s really proud of me. One of the good things about having a cafe is everyone knows I run one so all my friend’s parents talk to me about it.
“Everyone is always interested and I love talking about food and Deptford and I really think everyone secretly wants to open a cafe.”
Dirty Apron is located in Deptford Market Yard – image Matt Grayson
The seeds of her own venture were planted when Suzie met co-founder Holly Williams at Bournemouth University.
“I studied sports science and Holly was doing animation. We met on the ladies football team. I think I tackled her and that’s how we became friends.
“We both just had a love of food and, when we weren’t in lectures, we would go to the local supermarket and try and do student dishes on a budget for the team and make them as exciting as possible.
“We would do big extravagant roasts and lasagne. It was a chance to cater for numbers and was really fun and this working relationship kicked off naturally.”
After graduating they both moved to London and, when the supper club wave hit, they decided to jump on board.
“We would meet up at the pub and organise these themed events over a bottle of wine,” said Suzie.
“It picked up some traction and it was when we did an Orange Is The New Black-themed event and 200 people came to this church hall in Limehouse that we knew we were on to something.”
Next came a six-week stint at Brick Lane Market where they cooked “way too much food” and it was a “bit of a slog”.
But rather than taking a breather, they Googled small festivals and booked every available pitch at events in the south under £100.
“Every weekend for one summer we were somewhere different, “ said Suzie. “It was exhausting but by the end, we decided we were up for the challenge.”
That meant getting proper kitchen experience, so Suzie ditched her job in public health and spent two years at Riley Rocket on the Kingston Road, working her way up to become manager.
When Holly saw the arches in Deptford were being developed and rented, the duo decided it was time to take the plunge.
Suzie said the name Dirty Apron summed up their humour and was a nod to classic greasy spoon cafes.
Over the years they have built up a family of loyal regulars, one of whom has even written a poem in tribute to the £5 coffee and bap deal.
Holly, who now lives in Brighton, manages the business side of things and New Cross resident Suzie takes charge of the cooking and supplies, which come from Tony’s Daily on the High Street, Bread Bread Bakery in Brixton, Ruby’s Of London in Greenwich and Alchemy Coffee Roastery in Wimbledon.
Suzie said: “Our main food is hearty brunches and we always have a vegan special, meat special and a soup of the day.
“We do a curried cauliflower, spinach and sauteed halloumi wrap served with fresh mint yoghurt and a really good tofu scramble with heavily spiced peppers and onions and lovely sourdough and salad and homemade relish.”
In winter, they serve up meat and vegan pies but, now the warmer weather is finally appearing, warm salads with ingredients such as quinoa, roasted broccoli, salsa verde and beetroot will be appearing on the menu.
“I love going out for food and cafe culture to get inspiration,” said Suzie.
“I go to all of the places around here and we are all really good friends, that’s one of the nice things about Deptford.”
The area’s social calendar is also a pivotal part of her planning.
“When the London Marathon goes past we know that we’ll need six people a day to cope with the demand and when Amal the doll came through recently I have never seen anything like it,” she said.
“There were tens of thousands of people. So you have to look at the schedule for what’s going on in Deptford and tailor the rota for the occasion.”
Dishes are developed with customers in mind – image Matt Grayson
Suzie loves to bring people together and has collaborated with Villages Brewery, creating a 150cm sausage roll for their harvest festival, with plans to hold events for the New Cross and Deptford Free Film Festival and for Lewisham London Borough of Culture 2022.
“When summer hits, capacity at the cafe will double because of the outdoor seating.
“We are very lucky because it’s very rare in London to get such a large off-road space,” said Suzie.
“It means we don’t have to hurry people. Food can take a while because sometimes we can be a 40-seater restaurant, but people can sit in the sun, have a coffee and enjoy themselves.
“Because it is one room and an open kitchen I’m good at spotting if someone needs someone and everyone does the same – there is lots of communication and chat and customers can basically talk to us from their table. There’s that real dynamic vibe.
“A lot of our customers are regulars so they get to know each other.
“I’ll often be having a conversation with someone on table six and someone from table five will chime in and then they end up talking to each other and then someone else will come and join in.
“Before you know it the whole place is involved in the same conversation, which I think is just the best thing about working here.”
Dirty Apron is open Wednesday through Sunday from 9.30am-4pm.
Something is growing in Tobacco Dock. Tucked away in one of its workspaces is The Rattle – a company that wants to give creatives the same power as tech CEOs.
Deliberately mysterious, its website and social channels are almost barren and membership is notoriously hard to come by. In five years, it has vetted 9,000 applicants and taken 600 members.
But with founders Chris Howard, 40, and Jon Eades, 38, about to land $10million in funding for an international expansion, the subversive ploy seems to be bearing fruit. So what the hell do they actually do?
“I began investing in weird humans in 2017,” said CEO Chris. “I had this personal belief that startups are really boring and every single one was yet another Uber for olives or Netflix for donkey saddles, just the same company over and over again.
“So I gave money to musicians and authors, comedians, math olympiad competitors and psychologists. I wanted to see what happened if you joined their team for six months and, it turned out, it was really cool stuff.
“It shows if you place the same trust you would in a tech nerd in a crazy creative type, they can create something just as valuable and socially powerful as Mark Zuckerberg.”
The premise is simple, at least on the surface. Members of The Rattle pay a fee and can drop into the Wapping site anytime between 8am and 10pm.
It comprises two small studios for writing or recording demos, a live room for up to 10 musicians, which can be used for live streaming and video shoots, and a well-equipped production room for recording and later stage production.
It sounds pretty standard, but under the surface there is much more going on.
“The Rattle is deliberately mysterious and secretive,” said Chris. “We want people to find it hard to join because it implies a certain character type.
“It’s important to us that every member is fucking crazy and has a world view that makes you go: ‘What?’.
“Then they have to be insanely talented at something, particularly something creative, or have made something really special.
“Finally they need to have this magnetism that draws people in.”
The space includes recording facilities
So how do you nurture such a diverse mix of people without stifling them?
“We’re not trying to make another Abbey Road,” said Jon, referencing the studios where he worked for a decade.
“This is a very fluid, very human environment where you are free to experiment and not count the clock or be hyper-conscious of how much it’s costing you.
“It’s a laboratory free from stress for prototyping and experimenting.”
While members casually chat, live stream, record and write, behind the scenes a team of 20 experts is busy documenting every move in order to “engineer serendipity”.
“It’s behind the scenes puppet mastering,” said Chris.
“That sounds weird, but all our members know we do this and the huge wealth of data we track allows our team to understand who needs to meet who and under what conditions.
“Then, for around 20% of our members that move into the venture side, we have a veteran team of about 20 ex-hackers, founders, music folk and tech developers whose job it is to co-create these projects that we think can change the world and transition them into companies. That’s our primary business.
“The last thing we do is connect the outside works into The Rattle so we curate investors and superstars that have done incredible things to come and inspire our members to be more daring and break as many rules as humanly possible in a safe and responsible way.
“Our entire mission as a company is to help the next generation of artists, hackers and inventors become disruptive founders.
“We think they are the ones who change society and the economy and we want to make sure this category of human has a chance.”
The co-founders have very different roles, defined by their obviously contrasting personalities and the diverse paths they took to find each other.
“Day to day, Jon focuses on getting the machinery working well together,” said Chris.
“My job is to make sure the right humans are in the mix from a team point of view and that the people who give us money don’t have too much influence over what we do. So I’m kind of like the shield and Jon’s the sword.”
Neither can keep a straight face at this point but while Chris guffaws with laughter, Jon gives a wry grin.
He grew up playing in orchestras, studied music and sound engineering at the University Of Surrey and pretty much walked straight into a technical role at Abbey Road Studios.
He went on to discover a passion for startups and launched Abbey Road Red, an incubator for tech entrepreneurs. Meanwhile, Chris was the council estate kid with a music A&R dad who he defied to become a moderately successful singer-songwriter.
But believing he was “too shit or too ugly” to make it work, he jacked it in and, on completing a degree in physics and a Ph.D in computational physics, ended up across the pond at MIT conducting research into the online psychology of motivation and social influence “because why the hell not?”.
He spun this into tech company Libboo, which identified audience trends and helped a thousand authors sell their books.
But when it began to fail, alongside his marriage, he landed back in England at Tobacco Dock, as MD of the UK arm of MassChallenge, a global network for entrepreneurs.
It was through their shared passion for music and startups that the two finally crossed paths.
“Having the Abbey Road business card meant I attracted a lot of people and one of those was Chris,” said Jon.
“Most people don’t forget their first meeting with Chris and I certainly didn’t. He just tells it how it is and suffers the bullshit less than some.
“As a young founder if you have a meeting with Chris, you get the truth and sometimes it stings.”
Chris said: “I just sent Jon a random email saying: ‘Hey, you don’t know me but…’ He had his guard up, but I decided to just keep trying and finally he invited me in.
“I just had the impression that he thought: ‘Urgh another one desperate to be involved’. So I just thought: ‘Fuck it, I’m not going to sell myself I’m just going to say what I think’.
“Fair to say I didn’t play it cool. I’m not cool.”
They kept in touch as The Rattle first took root and, when it secured its first investment at the end of 2017, Jon decided it was time to leave the “safe haven” of Abbey Road and follow his “entrepreneurial urges”.
“That’s how The Rattle started officially – on February 9, 2018,” he said. “It was a quick turnaround and at this point Chris decided to get married and go on honeymoon to Thailand.”
Chris, who now lives in Bath and juggles jetting round the world with parenting, laughs gleefully at this point and shortly afterwards dashes off unexpectedly once again to do a pitch to an investor.
“Man on the ground, Jon, notes his business partner has a “love-hate relationship” with raising funds, but his brilliance at doing so should soon land them enough cash to launch the next phase of The Rattle.
The Rattle began with 50 founding members
Jon, who lives in Peckham, said it started with 50 founding members as “an experiment” and they had made tonnes of mistakes along the way, but by the end of 2018 had raised $2million, which allowed them to open a second location in Silverlake, Los Angeles, in March 2020.
“Most people remember that week,” said Jon.
“I got the last flight back as America was closing its borders and we had to put a blanket over it for four months, but our founding members all stuck with it and so did the London crowd.
“There is this real feeling of belonging and being chosen.”
That nurturing environment is now evolving into an ecosystem that he wants to see spread across the world.
“In 2019, we started to explore the notion of venture building where you join someone’s team, temporarily, parachute in and leverage everything you have to help them.
“The other people who tend to provide that sort of thing in music are managers, labels and lawyers.
“Our offering was such a breath of fresh air and we were amazed by the results – that’s become the seedling of everything we have done since.
“Really what The Rattle is today is a venture studio where we can explain our world view about drawing on expertise from the startup world and approach funding in different ways to see how it can benefit them.
“Once you have built that trust you can partner with them and now we are taking long-term positions with people.
“They stop paying us and we take a bit of ownership and hope in five years they become profitable.”
Today it has 75 members per location and has started roughly 25 ventures that it thinks will help change the world.
“It’s not about trying to become famous and high numbers,” said Jon. “Streaming only really makes sense for the Ed Sheerans and Dua Lipas of the world.
“But if you really know who you are and how to engage with high-value fans, there’s real money to be made and a social impact that really affects people’s lives.
“We are the first ones who have found a way to show people a different path, which is all about behaving like a founder, taking responsibility and not handing over control to people prematurely and being taken advantage of.
“If members choose to interface with the existing industry then so be it – we are not anti-label – but we want people to do it from a position of strength so they know what they are getting involved in.”
The Rattle is structures so it shares in members’ profits
Everything The Rattle does is on an equitable basis. They never touch revenue or rights, but become shareholders, so are the last to get paid if there is any profit.
“That means we can give honest advice because if we screw the artist we are screwing ourselves,” said Jon.
“Although we are down every month from a cash flow perspective, we are signing more and more equitable agreements with people, so the assets we are accumulating are increasing.
“At the moment, we are trying to close out $10million, so that’s really exciting and we’re also trying to lead the way by doing a crypto raise, which is attracting more new investors.
“Having that money will mean we can refresh our spaces, maybe even move to new facilities and set-up New York and one or two more within the next couple of years and for the first time be on the map as a real challenger.
“We have been this scrappy outsider so far, but now it is really starting to come together and we can start to challenge some of the bigger record companies and offer the best people a real alternative.”
“Instead of signing a record deal he formed a limited company, sold shares and raised £150,000,” said Jon.
“That enabled him to explore business models and he grew a super fan community using WhatsApp and other platforms and built his whole operation around figuring out what they were interested in buying from him and being quite high touch about it.
“He isn’t very famous, but he has built up a really solid business.”
“Created a platform that allows people to create immersive 3D experiences really easily so musicians can perform inside interactive worlds and make live streaming less dull. They are just closing out a big round of investment.”
Feed Forward
“Using AI to improve music search and retrieval, which sounds quite boring but is quite impactful.”
“They call themselves high five hip-hop. It’s throwback 1990s where they are quite irreverent and write songs around topical themes. They did one for World Bee Day. They have built up a core of fans and throw house parties with beer pong and Super Nintendo.”
“British psychedelic band trying to revive that golden age of the 1970s. Saw other bands doing it and incited a whole lifestyle around tie-dye and slow living.”
