Brick Lane: a creativity-driven success? BY LULU

On Thursday 4 July, part of the CIDA team, as four casual visitors wandered around East London. We finally decided to pay our attention to Brick Lane which represents a good case for the ungovernability of creative practises and cultural production. 

In general, the name Brick Lane, this inner-city area has been functioned as an international brand characterised by micro-enterprises and self-employed entrepreneurs involved in small retail, leisure and creative businesses.  

Particularly as in the rest of the UK, Brick lane is called as ‘curry capital’. The ‘Indian’ restaurants are generally owned by Bangladeshi. According to Carey (2004), Brick Lane’s Indian restaurants are not isolated. In fact, many of them were hugely influenced by the success of ‘upmarket’ restaurant such as Cafe Spice in Soho and West End London. 







More precisely, the creative and cultural sectors such as galleries, bookshop, theme cafe, independent music &fashion retailers are dominated in this neighbourhood. Compare with the fashion retailers in oxford circus, their organisation is better described as networked especially more intense interaction among producers, consumers and niche innovators rather than dominated by firms.  Particularly I drew my focus on brick lane gallery and an independent record store called Rough Trade.

I do love going to contemporary galleries especially discovering fresh art pieces. When I came across the brick lane gallery, I found the gallery itself has a specific aesthetic. I sketch them as mixed modern mediums with a dash of pop art. After doing a little bit research and chatting with the invigilator, the main function of this gallery is about grassroots artists could send in their portfolio, and if chosen can pay various amount (quite depends)to exhibit and sell their work here. After reviewing several pieces of art, each holds a special story from the artists past, which has influenced them enough to make an everlasting impression.  I could really feel these artists’ true feeling. They seem to shout: ‘I am the master of my tastes and feelings, I only paint like I live!’

To be honest, during our half day visit, I spent almost an hour on Rough Trade, the future of music retail from my perspective. Everyone knows how difficult it is out there for music record stores at the moment, but the Rough Trade shops are a real success story. Apart from the passion and expertise of their staffs, Compare with HMV, the chief secret of Rough Trade’s success is derived from the nature of the music they stock. 

They also provide the meeting places and live show stages. Fans of music can go there without spending any money. They can browse in a safe and relaxed environment including the coffee stand, whatever takes your fancy.

Yeah! 

We can’t 100% rely on internet and be in our bedrooms 24 hours a day. Moving your ass and take a breath to see what is the real music life!

Critical thinking!

Apart from the success aspects of Brick Lane, it is important to note that despite this influx of capital, people and creative idea from elsewhere, Brick lane remains an extremely poor area, dominated by social housing and a reliant on state and their sector support.  Organisations like the East London Business Association keen to support training, mentoring and small business growth. The interesting thing is the diversity of Brick Lane is one of its best selling point! The mixture involves ethnic, social class, communities.  Lastly, I do hope the creative policy issued by the UK government could adopt more strategies to let brick lane become a more sustainable and unique creative cluster.