Returning in summer 2026, Hackney Art Week is a borough-wide celebration of contemporary creativity, bringing together more than 60 artists and creatives across 50 venues in one of London’s most dynamic cultural areas.
Founded in 2025 by Hackney residents Lisa Baker and Anna McHugh, the festival unfolds across Dalston, Clapton, London Fields, De Beauvoir, Stoke Newington, Haggerston, and Hackney Wick — transforming the borough into a network of cultural moments.
Far from a traditional art week, Hackney becomes a loose constellation of happenings. Markets, exhibitions, murals, workshops — popping up across studios, streets and neighbourhood spaces, where exhibitions, food, music and performance intersect in unexpected ways.
Across ten days, the borough’s creative scene moves outwards — into Brutalist buildings, hidden galleries, public spaces, shops, and late-night venues — creating a programme that unfolds across the borough.
Long recognised as one of London’s most concentrated creative communities, Hackney continues to shape the city’s cultural identity through its artists, photographers, musicians and writers. Yet as access to space becomes increasingly constrained, the need for meaningful, independent platforms has never been more urgent. Hackney Art Week responds directly to this moment — creating opportunities for artists to present work, connect with audiences, and build community within the neighbourhoods that sustain them.
The festival brings art into the spaces people already inhabit — from cafés, hairdressers and record shops to pubs, bakeries and street corners. Works by participating artists will be available to purchase throughout the festival, with a selection of limited-edition Hackney Art Week prints released in support of local charity Hackney Giving.
Hackney Art Week 2026 unfolds as a series of distinct cultural moments across the borough — from exhibition openings, spoken word, ceramics workshops, an art treasure hunt, sound systems and performance art.
Highlights Include:
Salon of The Spectacle – The Rose Lipman Building
Hackney Art Week kicks off with an opening night at the iconic Brutalist Rose Lipman Building in De Beauvoir, which becomes the setting for a programme of female-led curators, artists and photographers. The creative space named after the former head of Hackney Council will host Salon of The Spectacle curated by Anne McCloy along with work by Hackney based photographer Amelia Troubridge, live dance performances, and an immersive installation by local artist Katie King. Drinks, art, performance, community. All welcome!
ESEACC at The Old Bath House
Hackney based Curator Mei Hui Liu presents an Asian art and food-led programme at ESEACC at The Old Bath House during the weekend of 6-7 June, bringing together a duo exhibition, film screening, curated market and dumpling pop-up — bridging contemporary art and food culture. Featured artists include Jun Jun, Bee Dwo Lin, Kelly Kiwi, Berlinda Chen and Ivy Mei.
Place at the Table
A collaborative project by artist Henny Beaumont and ceramicist Brigit Connolly, Place at the Table brings together residents and young people with learning disabilities from the Laburnum Out and About Club in Hackney. The project unfolds as a ceramics workshop and market at The Cannery, creating a shared space for making, exchange and participation.
Outdoor Projection from Claudi Panaite
Multidisciplinary artist Claudi Panaite will present a vibrant projection across Wilton Way—where swirling skirts and dramatic capes come alive in motion, transforming the street into a bold, cinematic fashion spectacle. Panaite who works across fashion, art direction, and set design is the founder of Prive Sampling Studio and has created work spanning Camden Fringe Festival, London Fashion Week, and Folies Bergère Paris.
Collagism™ Art Hunt
Hackney-based multimedia artist Holly-Anne Buck (Collagism™) presents a borough-wide art treasure hunt for Hackney Art Week, alongside the release of a limited-edition charity print of her cult cheese handbag —first seen during Paris Fashion Week—with proceeds supporting Hackney Giving.
Step into Collagism’s living collage as the streets of London Fields transform into a playful, immersive trail. Artworks slip into the everyday—appearing in bakeries, cinemas, corner shops, and unexpected corners of the neighbourhood—while QR codes and hidden clues guide visitors from one location to the next. Each stop becomes a portal into a larger, surreal world where nothing is quite what it seems.
Part exhibition, part game, and part moving collage, the project invites audiences to explore, discover, and piece together fragments of Collagism’s universe across Hackney.
The Art of Noticing
A writing workshop led by Rosie Storey, a novelist and writing coach. We often move through the world by habit and assumption, lost in our own worries and to-do lists. This session invites participants to slow down, pay attention, and explore how noticing can become a way into both writing and presence of mind. Through a series of short, low-pressure exercises, participants will explore the power of detail and discover gentle ways to bring writing into everyday life. No previous writing experience needed. Please bring a notebook, or paper and a pen.
The White Cage — Tara Darby
In one of the festival’s most powerful and deeply rooted projects, NPG Portrait Award nominee Tara Darby is debuting a new photography project about Hackney — The White Cage is a photographic installation embedded within the Regent’s Estate football pitch, one of Hackney’s last remaining gang-neutral spaces. Through intimate portraits and lived stories, the work follows the kids, mentors and families who rely on the cage as a place of freedom, discipline and escape — from aspiring footballer Adonis to community coach Elvis and Ella, who trains there in the wake of personal loss. Set just moments from the wealth of Broadway Market, the project captures a fragile ecosystem of community and belonging under threat, as redevelopment plans risk erasing a space that holds together cultures, generations and futures. Darby will exhibit the project on the exterior of the cage that it celebrates.
GG the Illustrator
London-based artist GG the Illustrator presents works from her ongoing visual archive of council estates, including Hackney’s Morland Estate. Working across acrylic, watercolour and digital illustration, she documents working-class neighbourhoods and everyday life as they face rapid change. GG’s intricately observed paintings capture places often overlooked, creating a record of communities in transition and reflecting a wider interest in addressing class and representation within the art world.
Live Music Curated by Gabriel Prokofiev
Gabriel Prokofiev is a composer working across classical and electronic music, and the founder of the Nonclassical record label and events series. Positioned at the intersection of genres, his work blends underground electronic influences with contemporary and traditional classical forms.
He gained international recognition with his Concerto for Turntables No.1, premiered at the BBC Proms, and has since composed eleven orchestral concertos alongside numerous works for strings and live electronics, which he performs on stage. His latest work, the first Synthesiser Concerto, premiered in Porto in 2025.
Through Nonclassical, Prokofiev has curated over 100 events in venues ranging from clubs to warehouses. In 2026, he co-founded Prokofiev Studios, a new multi-format creative space in Hackney. Gabriel will curate a night of live music for Hackney Art Week.
The Sandwich Walk
Jeanne Gourlaouen presents The Sandwich Walk—a surreal installation where shoes and sandwiches collide to form a strange, wandering crowd. Set at Wilton Way, these mutant sculptures feel caught mid-motion, blurring the line between object and behaviour. Playful, uncanny, and slightly absurd, the work reimagines everyday life as a shifting choreography—inviting visitors to pause, look twice, and question the paths we follow without thinking.
Dalston Cultural Quarter Takeover
On 6-7 June, Dalston’s cultural quarter will host a weekend of workshops, artist open studios, a ceramics market and a street-level sound system, centred around Arcola Street and led by V22 Studios — a rare moment where making, music and public space collide.
Martina O’Shea at Raleigh Chapel, Stoke Newington
Artist Martina O’Shea presents a multi-sensory installation at Raleigh Chapel exploring repair, memory, and transmission. Responding to the building’s architecture, wall-based works trace its visible brick restorations, while sculptural frames and intimate shrine pieces create a dialogue between construction and the esoteric.
A spatial sound work—combining radio static, fire, organ tones, and the voice of Peig Sayers—emerges from the rafters, evoking fragmented communication and discovery. Experimental stained-glass interventions filter shifting light through the stairway, accompanied by a programme of gatherings that activate the space collectively.
O’Shea, whose practice spans sculpture, sound, and zine-making, draws on memory, language, and oral transmission—allowing materials to misbehave and meaning to emerge over time. She notes: “I’m excited to develop work for Raleigh Chapel—its architecture, history and repairs inform the project, and I’m delighted to be part of Hackney Art Week.”
Hackney Art Week reflects the full breadth of the borough’s creative ecology — bringing together established names alongside emerging and independent artists and creatives. With growing local support and an expanding footprint, the free festival continues to evolve as a defining moment in London’s summer cultural calendar — rooted in place, community and creative exchange.
