If you’ve been down to Brion Place recently you might have noticed some shipping containers sitting in the car park, and wondered what they are doing there. These little white boxes are in the fact the home of Poplar’s newest community project, R-Urban.
Three generations enjoyed Lucio’s gnocchi.
R-Urban is a series of workshops and events that focus on local people coming together, learning new skills, and enjoying food together. At the moment it consists of a workshop space, a kitchen and an anaerobic digester. An anaerobic digester (I’m assuming people don’t know what it is… I certainly didn’t!) is a clever contraption that consumes household waste from local homes, and turns it into biogas and fertiliser. The biogas will eventually be used to fuel the kitchen, and the fertiliser will help grow tasty veg in the neighbouring community garden, which we will all cook and eat together in the kitchen. Nice, eh? A couple of weeks ago, people had a great evening making fresh pasta and gnocchi, little Italian potato dumplings, and ‘head chef’ Lucio cooked a great sauce to go with.
Trying out the home made stains
As well as cooking and eating delicious food, R-Urban will host series of workshops where people can learn basic construction and making skills, and find out how to recycle and re-use everyday items. At the first workshop, a local artist came down to teach people how to make colourful stains from plants that you can find all over Poplar, and more workshops are planned for the coming months.
All events and workshops at R-Urban are completely free and open to all, and the meals are based on a donation system. If you want to know more about the events coming up, you can join the facebook group here where information is posted.
R-Urban is operated by public works architecture and art collective. For more information on public works, please their website – http://www.publicworksgroup.net/
