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.

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.