Exploring History through Creativity
In these free creative sessions, we will be exploring the East End history through collage, photography, movement, singing and soundscapes and performance.
Tuesday 22 September, 2-3.30PM
Saturday 26 September, 2-3.30PM
We will cover topics such as:
- industrialisation
- workers movement from London dock strike to the match girls strike
- how the British Empire / East India company brought migrants from all over the world,
- Black Runaways and Bengali Lascars
- London’s first Chinatown
- the Poplar rates rebellion in 1921
- the East London socialist suffragettes
- Billingsgate Market, Chrisp Street Market
- the closure of the Docks
- Balfron Tower, the building of Canary Wharf
- the BNP and the 90s anti-racism resistance
- gentrification
- and more…
Come learn, explore, and share your own stories!
Facilitator bio: Tasnim Siddiqa Amin (she/they) is a working-class Bangladeshi-British artist, theatremaker and activist from Poplar. Her interdisciplinary practice spans theatre, performance art, visual art and community arts facilitation, grounded in anti-racism, postcolonialism and intersectional feminism.
Tasnim’s practice is trauma-informed and grounded in care-based methodologies, shaped by lived experience and a commitment to collective wellbeing. She designs and delivers participatory arts programmes that prioritise accessibility, co-creation, and long-term relationship-building using creativity as a means of connection, reflection and resistance.
Tasnim is currently Assistant Director/Producer at Daedalus Theatre Company, she has developed creative nature workshops designed to confront environmental justice issues with working-class communities in Havering and facilitated creative collaborations with LGBTQ+, global majority, Bengali and Jewish communities across Tower Hamlets and East London.
She is an Associate Artist at Tamasha Theatre where she took part in a Creative Wellbeing Lab, an 18-month training programme for creative facilitators exploring art, mental health and community in practice supported by Creative Health Camden, King’s College London and the Baring Foundation.
As a member of the Tower Hamlets Creative Health Forum, led by St Margaret’s House, Tasnim contributes to borough-wide conversations about integrating arts, health and community practice within local systems of care. Tasnim was also part of Active Ingredients in 2023/24, a collaborative project between Poplar Union and Queen Mary University London, developed in collaboration with Dr Maria Turri, focused on care, safety, and sustainability within creative health and social prescribing practice.
