From humble beginnings in the 1980s selling his spare clothes for pennies on a Camden Market stall, to founding a studio that reinvents the way whole neighbourhoods work, Wayne Hemingway’s journey is a locally-sourced creative-thinking success story.

This time last year, Hemingway Design expanded upon their popular posh preloved clobber ‘n motors concept, Classic Car Boot Sale, teaming up with the equally sustainably-minded Maria Chenoweth of textiles charity TRAID, to launch a huge secondhand clothes bonanza in aid of multiple charities, housed in the former Top Shop store at Brent Cross.

Their Charity Super.Mkt concept has taken right off, with big, bold temporary clothes markets, complete with DJs, reinvigorating depressed retail units from Bristol to Edinburgh ever since.

And they’ve just announced undoubtedly their biggest empty store takeover to date, which you’ll find from Feb 9th at Bond Street’s former Fenwicks, popping-up straight after the iconic Mayfair shopping staple closes down after 130 years in business.

Much hair has been pulled in frustration at the glaringly unsustainable evils of fast fashion and the inexorable demise of the traditional high street, but Charity Super.Mkt, with it’s social and environmental impact baked in, points towards a positive reinvention of both.

It tempts us to even dare to dream of a time when the soulless consumerist hamster wheel might successfully be usurped by a truly circular fashion economy, traded from inside accessible, meaningful community spaces found on every high street.

And while it is still ultimately down to our sluggish leaders and overpowerful corporations to affect the step changes needed to exist more harmoniously with the environment, there are plenty more positive such projects we can engage with to feel a touch more optimistic and pro-active about our current eco predicaments too…

💚 The lowdown on loads more local low impact living initiatives for you to try

⚒️ Borrow, don’t buy is the modus operandi of the Library of Things, another visionary project that’s quietly transforming high streets by reinventing and reviving municipal libraries. Drop in and pick up a tool for some DIY, a projector for a karaoke party or a steam cleaner for a carpet spruce-up, without having to buy the object and leave it under the stairs for the rest of the year. Nearest locations are currently in Kentish Town and Kilburn.

🪛 Learn how to revive your existing gadgets, either by visiting with a broken toaster, laptop or hair drier to fix, or going a bit further and taking a course, all at the Fixing Factory in Queen’s Crescent. You’ll save money, divert waste from landfill and gain useful repair skills that might even become a paid job/side hustle.

📖 Explore the power of storytelling at the British Library, where the former Last Word Cafe in the courtyard out front has been transformed into the latest Think & Do Sharing Space. These locally-founded hubs of climate and social action host weekly Earth Story events on Tuesdays, and are expanding from Camden into other boroughs in London this year, too.

🌐 Join an alternative members club, and explore new perspectives about the transformation humanity is undergoing, like it or not. From the degradation of nature and climate to the social and cultural impact these changes will bring, you’ll find speakers, panels, debates and screenings at radical event space Kairos on Tottenham Court Rd.

🧸 Recycle toys for the next generation, at Archway’s beloved TOY Project, which not only saves a load of plastic from being buried or burned, but also provides children locally and internationally with toys and a range of educational and wellbeing support, too.

📲 Download an app (or three), as the tech really lends itself to reducing waste by connecting people and needs. Crouch End-founded OLIO has been a smash hit, emerging from a simple WhatsApp group for sharing uneaten foods with neighbours into a full spectrum waste-busting platform in a few short years. 📲 Too Good To Go flags where you can pick up piles of sandwiches, breads, cakes and prepared hot meals from cafes and retailers at the end of each day - for peanuts. 📲 Goodmine is preparing to launch a trial in Islington of their hot new app, which works out the most ecological - and profitable - way for you to get rid of unwanted clutter and tech.

🌞 Save money saving energy is an idea absolutely everyone can get enthused by, and the enthusiastic volunteers at Power Up North London alongside their friends Retrofit Kentish Town will be showing you loads of ways to do just that, on their Energy Saving Bus, which will be parked up on Islip St next Saturday (27th Jan) 11am-3pm.

🚲 Upcycle your cycle, with Your Bike Project, who train young people in Camden to refurbish and repair bicycles, diverting the bikes from landfill, and the local youth from getting caught up with gangs and crime. Look out for their regular free Dr Bike surgeries at Somers Town’s The Living Centre and visiting estates across Camden.

🚵🏼‍♂️ A transition to electric for all, with Camden Collective business Loud Mobility, who have just been announced as an activation partner at the forthcoming King’s Cross Earthfest festival’s e-mobility zone. They’re a social enterprise committed to sustainable inclusive transport and diversity, and will be running a women-only cycling test track on Camley St during the event, which runs across the weekend of 18th-21st April.

🍏 Eat locally grown, by buying your fruit and vegetables from the popular Vegbox scheme, which sources its produce from farms near London, and delivers to 20 pick-up points across Camden, from Clerkenwell to Belsize Park.

 🌿Eat your (greenest of) greens - and talking of locally grown, it doesn’t really come much closer than the urban vertical farm at Tasty Micros, who produce lovely peppery superfoods indoors under LED lights in Tufnell Park.

🚲 Pedal the most precious cargo, be it an item of furniture or even a couple of young kids, safely stowed inside a specially designed e-cargo Our Bike vehicle, instead of clogging the roads with a gas-guzzling car. You'll find one that can be hired for just £3 an hour from the bay outside Kentish Town Stores, Caversham Rd.

🚲 Ride on London’s most sustainable transport for free - remember, if you’ve not claimed your free 60 mins of discounts on Forest ebikes, download the app now and use the code CAMDENIST60 - the free minutes last up to three months, and that’s on top of the 10 free mins a day Forest offer everyone, too.

🎭 Blend art and ecology, at Chalk Farm’s eco-focused creative hub Proposition Studios. Tonight they play host to a performance of Fortune Teller by Food of War and Harriet Poznansky, a play on the themes of food and the environment, with a discussion and drinks after. Tickets here. 

FOOD & DRINK

Caldesi is coming to Belsize

Following the sudden sad demise of Italian wine bar Calici in Belsize Village in the autumn, it’s encouraging to see the site already preparing to be taken on by a new operator.

Word is that it will soon open as the latest outpost of Caldesi, which is already a fixture out in the Fat Duck country of Bray (pictured above), and also a popular corner spot on Marylebone Lane.

The restaurants’ formerly larger-than-life chef/owner Giancarlo Caldesi was diagnosed with type 2 diabetes and a severe gluten intolerance a decade ago, but rose to the challenge of not eating his beloved pizza, pasta and breads, and has specialised in low-carb cookery alongside the timeless Italian classics.

🍣 Meanwhile, just up the road, Hampstead High St newcomer INÉ by Taku has begun serving 17-course daily omakase sushi on a counter, or a la carte in the main dining room. It’s from the people behind Mayfair’s Michelin starred Taku, so is an ambitious if almost certainly delicious new arrival in the rather staid dining scene of Hampstead’s own Village.

🥟 Down in Fitzrovia, Kinkally is a beautifully-designed new spot dedicated to plump and colourful Georgian dumplings and small plates. There’s an equally cool cocktail bar in the basement, too.

📊 This week’s poll question

VIDEOS

📺 Latest Camden clips to watch

🎙️ The teaser trailer for the imminent Amy Winehouse biopic Back to Black dropped this week, and features loads of local landmarks looking suitably stylish. The film itself is out just after Easter.

🦍 Cute video alert! There was a new arrival down at London Zoo this week, a critically endangered Western Lowland Gorilla, who you can see for the first time here (you might want to mute the questionable stock music though).

MUSIC

What to go listen to locally this week

🎷 There's a night of afrobeat, jazz and avant-garde dance at King's Cross Jamboree tonight as Fela Kuti’s Lagos-born band-member Bukky Leo brings his Afrobeat Quartet to town.

🎙️ Fans of era-defining soul, hip-hop and R&B (and who isn’t right?) are in for a treat on Sunday (21st) at the Jazz Cafe, when the legendary London Community Gospel Choir celebrate the great songs via the medium of their full gospel-infused pipes.

🕸️ The Fiddler’s Elbow sees the return of popular free local music and creatives networking bash CMMNTY NETWORK, with an open mic where you’ll catch some of London’s up and coming new artists for the first time, on Thursday (25th).

🎻 Holborn’s Conway Hall opens its Folk Unplugged Spring Season on Thurs (25th) with dynamic duo Brooks Williams & Aaron Catlow, support by singer-songwriter Hannah Scott playing unique folk music with poignant songwriting.

🎸 UCL Rhapsody returns for it's 10th annual musical bonanza at Bloomsbury Theatre, kicking off on Thursday for three nights (until Sat 27th). Over 100 musicians from 20 bands at UCL’s Live Music Society will be blasting out the hits from across the decades and genres, at this very lively showcase.

CAMDEN DIARY

Space and Place

The weekly Camdenist column: a week of living, working and playing in the borough…

SUNDAY: Having missed the Hockney due to general diary disorganisation, we finally got down for a look inside King’s Cross experiential venue The Lightroom for its second show, The Moonwalkers. Old pro Tom Hanks narrates the story of the various Apollo lunar missions, while masses of mind-boggling footage flickers, roars and glistens all around on the 360 degree three-storey high walls. Despite the familiar, well-worn visuals of Neil Armstrong’s first step, those crystal clear photos of the earth-rise and various astronaut videos bouncing about in the moon buggy, it’s still almost impossible to avoid being overwhelmed by much of the 50-min show. The format does real justice to the vast scale of the rockets, and the almost comically flimsy landing craft, gamely touching down against the infinite setting of the cosmos. We emerged, bamboozled just as intended, back into our own cold darkness of a late January afternoon. While the reception area of The Lightroom is as slick as any KX attraction, it was unexpected, and rather exciting, that the actual arena is right down in the bowels of the Meta HQ. Narrow stairs and passages past the water pipes gives it nice edge, and a feeling of total separation from world outside. It will be really interesting to see what follows next down there when this show finishes after Easter. But then with the forthcoming Artemis lunar landing timetable (that is such a central feature of the astronaut interviews in The Moonwalkers) having just been pushed back into 2025, it’s probably ripe for an extension. Fancy checking it out yourself before then? As ever, email [email protected] with the subject line ‘I wanna go to the moon’ and we’ll pick a winner of 4 x tickets on Monday.

THURSDAY: This week’s Knowledge Quarter Steering Group meeting brought out unexpectedly plentiful numbers of members on a crisp and freezing winter’s day. Maybe it was the sunshine, new year’s resolutions around community engagement, or the decent line-up of speakers and topics on the agenda. Or perhaps it was the chance to take a look around Bloomsbury’s imposing icon Senate House (pictured above). In fact, as we were told, the ground floor of the huge building is actually a public right of way, so everyone is very welcome to drop in anytime. And over the next five years, the University of London has bold plans to transform this whole area into a far more inviting place to visit and hang. Aware that most Londoners, let alone non-student visitors of any stripes, rarely if ever pass through the vast and rather beautiful swathe of the West End, the hope is to remedy that, with plenty of the placemaking gubbins we’re now used to from other successful public spots such as art, fountains and posh coffee. Lots of coffee. For those interested in this really striking London landmark, there’s a small exhibition now on revealing plenty more about whole area and the central building which, on completion, was the second tallest in the capital after St Paul’s Cathedral.

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