The self-proclaimed Vandal Extraordinaire. Crackney's undisputed finest. Ronzo has been an ever present fixture of the London street art scene since the early days.

His characters exist in their own world but reflect on the issues of our reality and have, as such become iconic cult monuments of the East End and beyond.

As I turned up to his studio, he was all set up to make me a sculpture while we recorded!

We talk about Ronzo's chance move to London from his native Germany. His introduction to the street art scene here from his time sharing a studio at the Stolen Space Gallery and hanging out at the infamous Dragon Bar.

We also talk a little about his move into computer game design (check out his game, Derek Deathfin), his digital art and more recently his NFTs.

Ronzo is always evolving, always creating and always manages to stay ahead of the game. What a pleasure to get this time with him.

Jenny Lewis is an award-winning photographer who embarked on her own projects after a successful career shooting for editorials. She has published three books: Hackney Studios, One Day Young and 100 Years and has exhibited her work around the world. Her intimate portraits focus on people in the East London Community so I wanted to meet her and find our more about her work and inspiration.

Through these unique and deeply personal projects and their subsequent public interventions, Jenny has brought the faces of so called 'ordinary' people to a wider audience. By placing them back into the visual landscape they make the subject feel extraordinary. 

Jenny invited me to her studio space which is a calm oasis alongside the Regent's Canal where large scale images from 100 Years are exhibited outside for by passers to enjoy. Spending time with Jenny in her studio, I quickly realised she has a remarkable gift that we experience through her art - the ability to capture the feeling of living in the moment whilst simultaneously feeling like time has paused.

Special thanks to former guest, Aida Wilde for introducing me to Jenny.

In this episode I chat to the brilliant Jay Ka3s.

Jay is a ln East London based, Spanish street artist, muralist and animator whose current body of work deals with our relationship with the online world with his style he refers to as the glitch.

We talk about Jay's background in hip-hop and graffiti, the astonishing efforts he went to to get his degree and how he eventually started a successful mural agency.

Jay's love of graffiti culture is palpable and he is an artist totally dedicated to his craft. It's been great to watch his work progress over the years and I loved having this opportunity to speak to one of the nicest guys in the game.

Saki & B, also known as Saki & Bitches is a Japanese artist based in East London. Originally a make-up artist, she relocated from a temporary stint in New York to the East End in 2009 and soon started painting her renowned Bitches on the streets.

Over the past six years Saki has worked predominantly in the studio where she has refined her painting and drawing styles which betray her lack of formal training. Her overtly sexual and provocative imagery seemed to have various abstract meanings, until the Me Too movement triggered an epiphany resulting in a new found understand of the work she creates.

In this fascinating chat we talk about how Saki's rebellious streak led

In this episode I sat down with the amazing Ben Wilson, better known to most as The Chewing Gum Man.

Ben is an artist and sculptor from North London who is best known for his miniature paintings on discarded chewing gums in London and beyond. He has transformed thousands of these pieces of waste into beautiful, colourful images around the world, including hundreds on London's Millennium Bridge alone.

They are often dedicated to people, pets, local businesses and landmarks and always have a sense of humanity at their core. Often hard to find and existing in a grey area of ownership and public space it is a contradiction to what Ben sees as an overly consumerist age.

I've been following Ben's art for many years and every time I discover a new piece it never ceases to blow me away or put a smile on my face.

We talk about his life and how he sees the chewing gum project as an act of community service, how it lead to his arrest and the subsequent court case with the City of London Police - which he won.

Talking with Ben, you can't help but feel the passion and love he has for his art and the people and world around him. At the end of the episode Ben took a photo of me in the podcast studio and painted it outside with a dedication to the podcast.

Despite the fact this was the second time he has attributed a piece to me, this one really did blow me away and gave me the biggest smile I've had in years.

Aida Wilde and her family arrived in the UK from Iran as asylum seekers when she was a child. During her formative years she has become a well-respected print maker, educator, curator and artist in her own right.

We discuss the culture shock of arriving from the middle east to Sunderland, onto her move to London and eventually her home of Hackney Wick. Aida’s work documents the fast-changing landscape of the Wick as well as calling out social injustice in all its forms, in particular ridiculing the patriarchy and the absurdity of the gender gap.

We talk about all of this and go off tangents about football culture, the creative industries and how she has maintained her integrity whilst dealing with the opportunities that success has brought her.

At every turn Aida was open and honest with wherever the conversation took us, and I left her studio feeling extremely privileged and grateful to have been allowed into her world to record this chat.  

Mohammed Ali is a British Bangladeshi artist from Birmingham. He has recently been spending time back in the East End's Banglatown where he has family connections (as well as Bangladesh itself), listening to stories from the local community to create a mural to celebrate 50 years of Bangladeshi independence.

Coming from a graffiti background, Mohammed moved into mural painting and filmmaking. He runs the arts organisation, Soul City Arts and is a trustee of the Birmingham Museum & Art Gallery.

We managed to squeeze in this recording at our studio late one night during the creation of the piece. We talk a lot about the mural itself and its important role in giving a platform to the prominent, yet underrepresented Begali community in the urban art world.

There has since been some high profile pieces, critical about the commissioned nature of the mural by Tower Hamlets, written in National papers. As these chats aren't scripted we didn't go down that route this time so I didn't get his take on this.

I hope though that this recording can be a testament to Mohammed's personal connection to the community and his genuine desire to represent the people in his art as well as his integrity as an artist and human.

You can find out more about Mohammed on his instagram here @aliaerosol

sb 15/10/22

In this first episode of the Alternative London Podcast we chat to co-founder of the East End Trades Guild, Krissie Nicolson. The Trades Guild was founded to give independent businesses, the self employed, charities and social enterprises a voice and a platform to organise in the face of rising rents, large-scale development and rapid gentrification in the East End of London.

The value of this union was really amplified for us during the pandemic, so we wanted to publicly thank Krissie for helping us and many others through it as well as finding out more about the Guild, Krissie's journey so far and her tips on how to organise a movement.

You can find out more about the East End Trades Guild on their instagram here @east_end_trades_guild

Adelaide artist Jimmy Cochran, better known as Jimmy C, has created large scale murals in his unique drip style and exhibited his work in galleries around the world. We first met Jimmy in 2010, not long after he moved to London and have enjoyed a close personal and occasional working relationship ever since.

His artworks have been an ever present fixture of London since his arrival here; his trademark drip heart is now the official meeting point at London Bridge Station, and his depiction of David Bowie in Brixton became the first piece of un-commissioned artwork in the UK to receive listed status from English Heritage.

We talk about Jimmy's artistic success and his intimate relationship with East London. As always there's no plan for the conversation so we go off on a few tangents too.

You can find out more about Jimmy and see his work on his instagram @akajimmyc

Jo Peel is an artist, film maker and animator from Sheffield, UK. After studying in Falmouth, she spent her formative years in the East End before moving back to Sheffield.

Jo's artworks alongside their technical brilliance and visual beauty provide an important archive of the ever-changing urban landscape. Her animation and more recently film work is both unique in style and visually captivating, focussing on themes of development, community and gentrification.

We've been fortunate enough to work with Jo over the years, so we talk about some of those projects and her journey as a trailblazing female artist since, as well as her ongoing relationship with East London after her move back home.

Jo will exhibit at the Ben Oakley Gallery 10 years after her first solo show there later this year.

You can find out more about Jo on her instagram @jo_peel and see her film work on her vimeo https://vimeo.com/jopeel