Mercury Prize winner Talvin Singh to launch London's Borough of Culture

Innovative: Talvin Singh will work with young musicians in Waltham Forest
Robert Dex @RobDexES28 August 2018

Mercury Prize winner Talvin Singh will be returning to his home town to help launch London’s first ever Borough of Culture.

The Leytonstone-born musician, who has worked with Madonna, Björk and Massive Attack, is coming back to Waltham Forest for the event, it was announced today.

He will collaborate with young musicians in the borough, composing a soundtrack for Welcome to the Forest, which will see a history of the area beamed on to the walls of the town in a laser light show.

Waltham Forest beat 21 others to win the £1.35 million Borough of Culture competition. Its plans include a film festival honouring another local — Alfred Hitchcock, born above a grocer’s store in Leytonstone.

Creative director Sam Hunt said the town hall event in January would stretch over several days: “It is de-signed so we can invite as many people as possible and make it as easy as possible for people to be part of it.”

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Mr Hunt, who led the Hull City of Culture creative programme last year, said involving local students in the light projection was typical of how the year will unfold.

“It’s the antithesis of art being done to a place — it needs to be the voice of Waltham Forest.” Tabla player and DJ Singh’s debut album Ok, which fused Indian classical music with styles from jazz to drum ’n’ bass, won the Mercury Prize in 1999. He now lives in Suffolk.

Waltham Forest has built a reputation for the arts as artists priced out of inner London have moved in. The Grade II-listed William Morris Gallery, home to the Victorian designer, writer and socialist activist for almost 10 years, was named Museum of the Year in 2013. Residents put on a regular art trail, transforming homes into galleries and opening to visitors.

Other stars to hail from the borough include Blur frontman Damon Albarn and rapper Lethal Bizzle, while Ian Dury, Ken Russell and Peter Greenaway studied at Walthamstow School of Art — now Waltham Forest College — and Peter Blake taught there.

From September, a funding scheme for a cultural programme in the borough for 2019 will open, with £500,000 to be invested in artists and organisations, the council says.

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