Events for Thu 10 Sep 2026
From the First Hackney Marsh Fun Festival to the last Hackney Carnival: An Exhibition to celebrate 50 years of Chats Palace
Chats Palace will be showing unseen images from the first Hackney Marsh Fun Festival from 1974 alongside images from the last ever Hackney Carnival in 2024. Separated by fifty years the photographs have been taken by Hackney photographer Neil Martinson. The Hackney Marsh Fun Festival led to the creation of Chats Palace because the festival grew so large that its organisers desperately needed a permanent, year-round headquarters. In 1974, the old, Grade II-listed Homerton Library closed down when a newer library opened nearby. Rather than letting the building fall into disrepair or corporate hands, community activists and festival organisers marched on and occupied the building in 1976. They reclaimed it to ensure it stayed "for the betterment of East Londoners". By 1977, they officially named it Chats Palace. Once established, Chats Palace became the engine room for the festival, housing its carnival committee, building floats, hosting local pensioner clubs, and providing a legendary local stage for community theatre and music. The exhibition will be showing September and October 2026. For the duration of its stay, the Exhibition will be on display on Wednesdays, Thursday, Fridays, & Sundays from 11am-3pm.
Squatting in Hackney with Tom Hunter, Mark Wilson and Leah Gordon
To celebrate the 50th birthday of Chats Palace, Photographer Tom Hunter will talk with Mark Wilson, lead singer of The Mob, and Leah Gordon author of ‘Common People: A Folk History of Land Rights, Enclosure and Resistance’ about the squatting communities in Hackney in the 1980’s and 1990’s and alternative ways of living in Hackney and beyond. Tom Hunter squatted on the East side on London Fields with a community of over 100 fellow squatters and did his first photography course at Chats Palace before making an international career in the art world documenting his community. Mark Wilson squatted in Brougham Road, played with The Mob at Chats Palace for a Advisory Service for Squatters benefit gig, and helped set up the Brougham Rd Housing co-op. He and many others from this community later went on the road alongside the Peace Convoy (that had roots in the old Hackney Bus Garage) and that ultimately ended its run a few years later at the Battle of the Beanfield whilst trying to reach the Stonehenge free festival. Leah squatted in many places in Central London in the 1980s, including Marylebone and Bloomsbury before settling in a Hackney housing co-operative house and finally […]