England riots one year on – Hackney’s youths reflect on freedom and safety

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Freedom/Lydia Noura, 16

To mark the anniversary of the devastating riots, which spread across the country last summer, Art Against Knives is hosting an exhibit exploring notions of freedom and safety in London’s Hackney’s diverse community.

Through film, audio, photography, painting and writing, the exhibition showcases the community’s response to the riots, police’s stop-and-search and freedom. The work is the result of collaborations between established photographers and young people from the borough.

The exhibition, which opens on Thursday 9 August at the Art Against Knives Gallery in Shoreditch and runs until the end of the month, kick-starts ‘STOP AND TALK’, a nationwide campaign that calls for better and fairer relationships between the police and young people.

The exhibit’s opening night also features a talk on journalism and the riots with award-winning Guardian journalist Paul Lewis, as well as a preview of Pagan, a short film about Kes, a 18-year-old from Hackney caught between the police and rival gangs. The film opens to the public on 31st August at Dalston Eastern Curve/V22.

For many young people, the borough is a haven of arts, culture and fashion, but for Kes and thousands who grew up here, most of the area is off-limits.  Large parts of Hackney have been claimed by one gang or another, and though most people have no idea where the borders lie, for Kes these invisible lines dictate where he goes and what he does in the place he calls home.

Instead of being able to turn to the police, young black people like Kes are 30 times more likely to be stopped-and-searched than white people, so the presence of officers on the streets only makes them feel less safe.

Stop and Search/Ondre Roach, 18

Hackney has been simmering with discontent as young people find themselves on the wrong side of the police and increasing social inequality. Last year's riots saw the borough reach boiling point.

The 'STOP AND TALK’ campaign is asking the police to try to better understand young people, connect with them and protect them rather than automatically see them as suspects.

Art Against Knives is a youth-led charity, which works to reduce the causes of knife crime through art initiatives and providing an alternative to violent gang culture.

The charity was born from the tragic and unprovoked stabbing of Oliver Hemsley, a 21-year-old student from Central Saint Martin’s College of Art & Design. The attack, which has left Oliver in a wheelchair, took place in Shoreditch, East London in August 2008. Art Against Knives decided to create something positive from this terrible experience.

WHAT DOES FREEDOM MEAN TO YOU? EXHIBITION- 9th- 30th August 2012

Art Against Knives Gallery, Unit 55, Bethnal Green Road, Shoreditch, London E1 6GJ

UK Riots - mindless thugs, but why?

Rioters in Liverpool/BBC

Like everyone else in England, I am trying to make sense of the mindless violence, arson and looting that have spread first across London, then to other cities throughout the country over the last four nights. Four people have died as a result of the mayhem.

Video footages show young men and women in hoodies torching local businesses and family houses, smashing windows, overturning cars, taunting terrified shop owners and residents, ransacking shops, drinking and laughing at the police, who were clearly out-numbered and overpowered.

The images are terrifying and unsettling – especially because the looting and violence are so brazen, and because many of the young people involved, some as young as 14 or 15, seem to have such a good time smashing up the place, like it is all a big joke.

Many didn’t even bother to cover their face. Some have even posted pictures on social networking sites, proudly showing off their haul.

Two girls who took part in Monday night's riots in Croydon, London, boasted on the BBC that they were showing police and "the rich" that "we can do what we want". 

Looters, Birmingham/AFP

 And that is what it looks like. In some areas, young people pillaged for hours before the police arrived. And when the police did arrive, they seemed powerless to do anything.  This new and unexpected feeling of having power and being in control must have been intoxicating to young people who are used to feel powerless. This acted as a catalyst for more violence. 

The devastating riots, which are still spreading across the country, first flared on Saturday after a peaceful protest in Tottenham, London, over the fatal shooting of Mark Duggan, 29, by police.

Commentators say the ensuing violence has nothing to do with the fatal shooting: the riots are not a social protest, but random opportunistic thuggery.

It is true that the riots don’t look like a social protest – the young people are not marching for a cause or rioting with a message; they seem to be looting, burning and smashing things up for the sake of it.

But this doesn’t mean there isn’t a deep underlying cause.

The riots started in deprived London’s boroughs hit harder with unemployment. And the recent cuts in social and educational services and programmes have only made things worse. 

The gap between rich and poor is ever growing here. Britain is now one of the most unequal countries in the developed world. And many young people, especially Blacks and Asians, see the police as adversarial and biased.

Many of the rioters have no stake in conformity and feel they have nothing to lose.

"They have no career to think about. They are not 'us'. They live out there on the margins, enraged, disappointed, capable of doing some awful things," says Prof John Pitts, a criminologist who advises several London local authorities on young people and gangs.