Adam Deacon: ‘I was too street and too scary for directors’
Adam Deacon talks about his Bafta for rising star and his desire to be a voice for modern youth
Features
How Hackney reclaimed child protection social work
Is a model of social work that radically transformed child protection in one borough about to go mainstream?
Top Boy gets a mixed reception from Hackney’s youth
A panel of locals enjoys a preview of the Channel 4 drama’s first episode, but finds plenty of flaws in Ronan Bennett’s supposedly realistic portrayal of life in the borough
Labrinth is SyCo’s latest signing but he doesn’t need a popstar bootcamp
Hard work and big tunes are all the Hackney producer cares about, but what if sleeping in the studio leads to a hobo beard?
Top boy: stories of Hackney’s young drug dealers
Ronan Bennett spent two years interviewing gang members in east London for his powerfully personal TV drama, Top Boy. Here he describes their hidden, hopeless world – and the lengths they’ll go to escape from it
After the riots: the Hackney worker teaching young men to be ambitious
Youth worker Emeka Egbuonu’s book has much to teach policymakers following the riots, writes Rachel Williams
The Saturday interview: Mossbourne academy’s Sir Michael Wilshaw
Sir Michael Wilshaw is the super-strict head at Mossbourne academy in Hackney, and is rumoured to become the new head of Ofsted. Can he repeat Mossbourne’s success nationwide?
Leona Lewis: the Hackney heroine has given Simon Cowell a lesson in taste
Collide singer talks epic spook-pop, riots and dodging Whitney style ballads with Sylvia Patterson
Will the National Citizen Service stop young people rioting?
David Cameron says the scheme will restore values, responsibility and self-discipline. Its critics say it is too expensive and will not help disaffected youngsters
The Hackney Heroine tells why she confronted rioters
Pauline Pearce – the woman with a walking stick – became a YouTube sensation after tackling looters in the street. Now she fears there’s more trouble ahead
UK riots: don’t shut these kids out now
Put the shutters up on the shops, but not in our minds. A punitive and condemning reaction simply mirrors the alienation so many already experience
I’m in two minds over the riots
Half of me wants to whack the rioters with a cricket bat, and the other half blames the world, for being unfair
London riots: ‘A generation who don’t respect their parents or police’
At street level in trouble-hit Hackney, residents paint a depressing picture of alienation, anger, boredom and mischief
Let the games begin
It’s a year to the start of the 2012 Olympics. Iain Sinclair, writer and arch critic of the project, takes on Labour’s Tessa Jowell who played a key role in the London bid
How power, money and art are shifting to the East End
The Olympics have fuelled regeneration, but while many welcome the changes, some fear its character will be lost
Iain Sinclair’s struggles with the city of London
Iain Sinclair has spent decades documenting the capital and its edgelands. Now he has launched a furious attack on the Olympic development project.