Havering Calling!

A call is never just one thing. It is an invitation, a provocation that alerts us, a gathering that brings us together, and a responsibility to act. To call is to reach out and announce our presence, to say: we are here.

Havering London’s first season of A Good Life begins with a call – to action. It signals Havering’s intention to speak in a new voice: bold, local, and connected.

This call is about listening as much as it is about speaking – listening to the collective experience of our communities, to the urgencies of our environment, and to the sounds and images that shape how we see ourselves. It is about creating platforms where voices can meet, whether through poetry, heritage, art, or new digital tools that open up participation to everyone.

Havering Calling! sets in motion a series of ten new projects that begin to reshape the borough’s cultural landscape. This includes the unveiling of a brand-new website, haveringlondon.com, one of the most extensive cultural platforms of its kind in the UK – a place for everyone to submit events, search for activities in new ways, and access opportunities.

Seeds of Change plants small ideas for big futures, from a green manifesto to talks and workshops led by Amber Massie-Blomfield of Fern Culture, Jack Hodgson of Jack’s Patch, and hyperlocal food events with Munotida Chinyanga.

We are setting out the blueprint for a transformative new Community Venue Network, building on the work of our partners at Havering Changing, connecting local places for the first time to share learning and strengthen and invest in the borough’s cultural ecology. A call-out for a curator of Mega Mega Mega will spark new conversations around rave and club culture in Havering. The Exchange will begin a process of celebrating our historic Romford Market. And a new Heritage Conference will spark debate and begin to map our heritage ecology.

The season also marks Havering London’s first steps into commissioning and story-telling. Through Open Places we will pilot a new public art commission, while Poetic Place invites poets, writers and communities to reimagine Havering through poetry slams, workshops, and billboard poetry.

Portrait of Havering, delivered through social realism and the celebratory photography of Nico Froehlich, asks us to look afresh at the borough and its people in a new light. Our Stories, a visionary new heritage archive, will map untold narratives across Havering, creating a digital platform for communities to share their memories and create new artefacts. Together, these projects form a call to action: to gather, to participate, to reimagine Havering’s image and identity, and to shape the future of its culture.

Like The Clash’s London Calling, we refuse to be overlooked; we insist on visibility, energy, and change. This is Havering’s moment to call out and to demand a cultural future that belongs to all of us. The call has gone out. How will you answer?