Backyard Biennial Neighbourhood Party

11am – 2pm | Drop-in, no booking required 

The Ropery is a participatory exhibition inspired by east London’s ropemaking heritage created in collaboration with Sanne Visser and including a moving image work from Samara Addai. 

Drop in to take part in a special ropemaking session facilitated by Sanne, as well as taking part in the other hands-on processes of making rope, string, braiding and knot-tying.  

For all ages. 

3 – 6pm | Drop-in, no booking required 

This drop-in session will bring together materials from collections across East London to invite participants to reflect on Whitechapel’s multi-layered histories of education, migration, activism, upheaval, and creative expression. Co-facilitated by writer and researcher M. Syd Rosen and Archivist Aiden Chan, this session will explore how diverse cultural collections can help us to make sense of the past and thereby help to shape the future of our communities.  

At the heart of this session will be objects from the former Whitechapel Public Library – known to locals as the University of the Ghetto – alongside records held by the Whitechapel Gallery Archive and items gathered by the partners of Backyard Biennial. These materials will be placed in dialogue in order to surface the hidden networks and connections generated by cultural collections.

All are welcome to come by and share their experiences, reflections, and speculations. 

11am – 9pm | Drop-in, no booking required 

Galleries 1, 2, 3 

East of the Aldgate Pump takes its title from the historic water pump that for hundreds of years marked an informal threshold between the City of London and the East End. Associated with movement across borders – social, cultural and geographic – the phrase evokes the crossings, encounters and communities that have shaped East London over centuries. It also gestures towards Whitechapel Gallery’s own history as a site deeply connected to both its local context and wider international histories.

Spanning painting, sculpture, photography, film and installation, the exhibition will respond to the rich and distinctive historic, cultural and creative identity of East London. Recognising East London’s history as a place of creative cross-cultural dialogues, the presentation will bring 12 local, national and international artists together across three galleries.

11am – 9pm | Drop-in, no booking required 

Gallery 5 & Foyle Reading Room 

OITIJ-JO Collective – a Bengali arts and heritage organisation based in East London – present TUFAN.  

Drawing inspiration from the Bangla word for storm, the exhibition and live programme symbolise sudden change, powerful energy, disruption, and the possibility of renewal. Inspired by Begum Rokeya – pioneering author of the feminist sci-fi short story Sultana’s Dream (1905) – OITIJ-JO Collective explore TUFAN as a process: a movement from turbulence to transformation, from rupture to regeneration. 

Participating artists include Rukia Begum, Puer Deorum, Laisul Hoque, Jannat Hussain, Shumaiya Khan, Rezia Wahid MBE, and Anisah Yaminah. 

11am – 9pm | Drop-in, no booking required 

Gallery 4 

Whitechapel Gallery presents a new commission from Argentinian Lisbon-based artist Gabriel Chaile (b. 1985, San Miguel de Tucumán, Argentina). Archaeology of Memory (Arqueología de la Memoria) offers audiences a significant opportunity to engage with Chaile’s work, following his shortlisting for the Fourth Plinth (2024) and presentation at Studio Voltaire (2023). 

11am – 9pm | Drop-in, no booking required 

Zilkha Auditorium 

John Smith Presents… is a specially curated selection of films from the last five decades by pioneering and influential artist John Smith. Rooted in everyday life and personal experience, the films in the programme revolve around places and events in Smith’s native East London. Taking the world around us as their starting point, his genre-defying works playfully explore and expose the language of cinema, challenging distinctions between documentary, fiction, representation and abstraction.

The East End Voices film programme focuses on East London communities, past and present and includes selections from Four Corners, London Community Video Archive, and OITIJ-JO Collective. 

6 – 11pm | Drop-in, no booking required

Across the building

The party will culminate in a special takeover of Whitechapel Gallery by creative collective DAYTIMERS, showcasing contemporary South Asian artistry and posing the question of who holds the power to shape the future of Brick Lane. 

Featuring a constellation of live music, performances, workshops, talks, poetry, films, pop-up market stalls, food, and more. 

Full schedule to be announced soon!

171 – 189 Whitechapel Rd, E1 1DN | 3 – 6pm

Drop-in, no booking required

Join artist Alvaro Barrington in the garden at Fredrica’s for an afternoon of drawing. This gathering invites participants to make work inspired by the artist’s garden and will feature seasonal plants and flowers sourced from the nearby Spitalfields City Farm. 

Children are welcome to attend but must be accompanied by an adult at all times. 

Refreshments will be provided. 

25 Princelet St, London E1 6QH | 11am – 5.45pm 

Drop-in, no booking required

The party will continue at House of Annetta with workshops and craft, making homes for insects from scrap wood, and sampling teas from plant brews. Addressing the Void, curated by Anusha Alamgir and Fawziyah Rahman will feature suitcase-sized works from the Bengali diaspora. At the end of the day, we’ll walk together with our new habitats for bugs down Brick Lane to join the bonfire at Spitalfields City Farm.  

Featured artists include Faiza Farooz, Sujatra Ghosh, Tamim Hossain, Lekhnessa Khushi, Shimul Paul, Taiyeba Muskan, Arinjoy Sen, Jannat Hussain, Puer Deorum, Fahmidul Hassan. 

Buxton St, London E1 5AR | 11am – 8pm 

Drop-in, no booking required  

Family Workshop | Paper Process Lab  

12pm – 4pm | Drop-in, no booking required 

Connecting with themes of material history in the local area, this workshop asks how can we transform wastepaper through playful exploration?  

Children and families will be invited to test out different material processes in a hands-on papermaking lab, mashing paper pulp, making egg box putty, moulding paper clay, and twisting paper ropes.  

Working with artist educator Sadie Edginton, children will be invited to participate in building a collective play structure out of paper rope, riffing off the local histories of rope making, which inform The Ropery exhibition at Whitechapel Gallery.

Community Recipe Book Build 

From 12pm | Drop-in, no booking required 

Bring along your recipes to add to our Spitalfields City Farm recipe book! 

Inspired by the Coriander Club growing group established by community gardener Lutfun Hussein, House of Annetta and Slow + Dirty Press have created riso-printed recipe book pages for visitors to fill out, decorate, and embellish to build a collective recipe book to take home. 

Baler Twine Weaving  

From 2pm | Drop-in, no booking required 

The farm tries to run as a circular system, creating as little waste as possible and reusing wherever we can.  

One thing that’s hard to recycle is the brightly coloured plastic twine which binds hay bales together. We get through so many bales (most of our animals eat hay!) that we are always looking for creative ways to use all the pink, orange and yellow string. 

 Join us for an experiment to see if we can weave with baling twine on our vintage upright loom.

Pollinators in East London  

From 4pm | Drop-in, no booking required 

Our site, though small, is home to an impressive array of wildlife, including thousands of pollinating insects. We’ll spend the afternoon learning about the site’s buzzing inhabitants, including in our newly established rubble garden. We also will explore the history and future of honey production in Whitechapel and Spitalfields, and the ways in which the honeybee captures human imagination and reflection more than any other creature.  

This will include a chance to look safely into our own honeybee colonies (weather depending!).

Stay and Play at the Ram and Magpie 

All day | Drop-in, no booking required 

Take a seat and watch your little ones play outdoors. We’ll have play equipment, sensory elements and trikes available all day for children to enjoy in the Ram and Magpie garden and den building materials for older kids in the grass walkway area. 

Founded in 2020, DAYTIMERS is a creative collective born on the internet during the global pandemic lockdown. The name pays homage to the daytime parties of the 1980s and 1990s, when young British Asians would skip school to dance to bhangra, garage and jungle in community spaces. In just a few years, DAYTIMERS has grown from an online idea into one of the most exciting voices in UK music and culture. At its heart is a mission to uplift South Asian artistry and platform talent. 

DAYTIMERS events are consistently among the most exciting and well attended, from grassroots fundraisers and packed club nights to festival stages across the UK and The collective’s impact also reaches further still through initiatives like SAATH, their community-run club, DAYTIMERS Football Club, as well as radio shows, streams, releases and partnerships that carry their message beyond the dancefloor. 

All of this allows DAYTIMERS to stand at the forefront of a new wave in music and cultural programming. Their wide-ranging projects and collaborations have nurtured a diverse roster of talent spanning DJs, producers, poets, artists and organisers, each channelling their heritage in innovative and personal ways. Always evolving in how they operate, who they platform and how they build, they continue to disrupt an industry in need of change while staying true to their collective and grassroots foundations. 

@daytimers_uk

Fredrica’s is Alvaro Barrington’s studio dedicated to artistic and cultural production. 

Since their inception in 1818 and 1895, the buildings at 179-181 Whitechapel Road in London were home to educational facilities. The Davenant School was the first occupier of the building, followed by a youth centre until 2017. Continuing the spirit of learning embedded in the history of this space, Alvaro Barrington invites artists to Fredrica’s to make and share their work within the context of an artist studio. 

@alvarobarrington

House of Annetta is a space for learning about the ways in which ownership of land shapes our lives and the world around us. We build infrastructure for movements, cultivate radical imagination and practice cultures of care. The project is a building site in the former cybernetic home of beekeeper, artist, activist and publisher Annetta Pedretti. 

@houseofannetta 

www.houseofannetta.org 

Spitalfields City Farm, founded in 1978 on a former railway goods depot in Tower Hamlets, is one of London’s most cherished urban green spaces. Created by local residents seeking allotments, it has since grown into a 1.3‑acre community hub, home to a variety of animals and productive growing spaces. A registered charity since 1980, the farm now welcomes around 18,000 visitors each year, offering educational activities, volunteering opportunities, and seasonal events. Just steps from Brick Lane, it provides vital access to nature in one of London’s most densely populated areas, fostering a safe, welcoming environment where people of all ages can learn, play, and connect with animals, plants, and each other. 

@spitalfieldscityfarm 

www.spitalfieldscityfarm.org