University of East London - Exhibition

University of East London students created a new multi-media exhibition at Hoppers. Students and staff at UEL created a permanent exhibition on hop picking at Hoppers. A team of 14 people spent a week researching the history of hop picking, interviewing ex-hop pickers from East London and using the interview recordings to create sound installations to accompany a photography exhibition. UEL lecturers Toby Butler and David Chapman, photographer Martin Garwood, seven students, local volunteers and Hoppers hosts (Susie, Sandra & Shirley) worked to create an exhibition on the ground floor of Hoppers. (See photographs by Martin Garwood below).

The exhibition featured sound and interview recordings with ex-hop pickers and photographs of farm workers who still work in the hop gardens and pictures of ruined hop pickers huts in

West Kent where thousands of East Londoners stayed for a few weeks each year to bring in the hop harvest. As part of the project residents from Tower Hamlets Community Housing in Cable Street were given a coach trip to the hospital and the Kent hop gardens, they had lunch with Five Oak Green village lunch club and were interviewed by students about their hop picking experiences.