This series explores the history of the radical visual imagery created at the Lenthall Road Workshop in Haggerston between the 1970s – 1990s. These images were made collectively and tell stories of activism, skill sharing and empowerment.
Introduction
The Lenthall Road Workshop was started by three women in 1975 as a community screen-printing and photography project. Local groups and individuals were offered a cheap and friendly space to learn skills and use the equipment to make their own images and posters. Over a 15-year period numerous groups came through the little yellow door at 81 Lenthall Road to do just that.
From making posters of women racing in wheelchairs and protesting on the streets, to teaching printing and photography, the Lenthall Road Workshop encouraged the local community, especially women and girls, to empower themselves.
The collective made a unique contribution to the local and national community arts movement and feminisms of the 1970s and 1980s.
As soon as we were in our boiler suits and masks we really looked like guerrilla fighters. We were definitely trying to change something in society; to change how women were viewed in society.
Claudette Johnson, Worker
© Lenthall Road Workshop
Beginnings
In the early 1970s Jim Shallcross ran a commercial screen-printing business at 81 Lenthall Road and also printed posters there for Centerprise, a community publishers, bookshop and café on Kingsland Road, Dalston.
In 1975, when he decided to give up the business, three women, Chia Moan, Viv Mullett and Jenny Smith saw an opportunity for a community printing workshop for local people.
Jim gave them a crash course in screen-printing and Centerprise agreed to pay the rent, rates and utility bills for the first six months. With help from the new Community Arts fund at the Arts Council of Great Britain, the workshop was soon able to open its doors.
The workshop also aimed to support photography at a time when photographs had to be processed in a ‘darkroom’ with special equipment. Fortunately, living next door to the workshop was Ernie Greenwood, photographer for the Hackney Communist Party and the socialist newspaper Morning Star. He shared his equipment with the Lenthall Road Workshop in exchange for moving his darkroom into it.
Courtesy of Eithne Nightingale.
Posters
Screen-printing allowed for new posters to be produced regularly as a cost-effective way of communicating to particular target audiences and promoting upcoming events.
The positioning and attractive designs often competed against each other on hoardings, walls and public spaces across Hackney.
“If you wanted to know what was going on, you would go to one of those print workshops.”
Chia Moan, Worker
© Lenthall Road Workshop
Content for this blog has been created in collaboration with former Lenthall Road workers: Claudette Johnson, Ingrid Pollard, Nicole Superville, Barbara Tombs, Rebecca Wilson with Jess Baines of See Red.
It featured in the exhibition ‘Women on Screens: Printmaking, photography and community activism at Lenthall Road Workshop 1970s–1990s’ at Hackney Museum 14 May – 31 August 2019.
Smashing, uplifting stories of what was going on in the area in the ’70-’90s pre-gentrification… do you have any stories from the perspective of the women and girls that took part in the workshops? Were any enabled to ‘break free’ and radically alter their life’s trajectory? And, dare I ask, is it better now than it was then?
Thanks Simon! We have more about the workshops in our follow up blog (https://hackney-museum.hackney.gov.uk/2022/08/11/lenthall-road-workshop-community-skill-sharing/) and the posts we will be publishing our the next few weeks. In the meantime I recommend this film featuring interviews with former workers and footage of the workshop in action – youtube.com/watch?v=xkkxoyuh8qQ&t
We would love to hear from anyone with memories of the workshop!