Make Town

Kia ora, I’m Brooke and I run Make Town – a creative makerspace in Hackney.

It would be a crying shame to have Make Town go bust over the doubling of rent on our property. We are one of the last functioning businesses down Morning Lane, which was redeveloped as the now failed ‘Fashion District’ following the London riots to regenerate the area.

In our building there are 10 local female owned micro businesses who have been operating successfully all during this period, who are also in this situation.

Make Town has been up and running for 4 years. We fought hard to stay afloat during the pandemic, running the Scrub Hub. Coordinating a network of local sewers making scrubs for medical staff. We accepted the Bounce Back loan to cover rent through this period. We waded through the Brexit debacle and the cost of living crisis and now the property owners are trying to fix something that ain’t broken.

Make Town is a beautiful purpose fit space providing a welcoming creative environment to Hackney residents and people all across London. We have had thousands of people engage with textiles through our workshops including your children and the Queer community. We have worked with local schools, The Red Cross, The Hackney Circle, and have donated to countless ‘raffles’ and ‘fundraisers’ for various local community projects. And we love what we do.

We have crossed every scary bridge with a cheerful can do attitude with determination and pride, but it looks like we are entering a very dark tunnel and we need your help to see the light at the end of it.

Make Town has been told to vacate our beautiful premises on June 30th, with classes running until the 23rd June.

We will no longer be able to continue to provide our creative textile classes to our wonderful and supportive community without some cash money to start up in a new location, to pay for storage until that time comes, to pay cancellation fees on our contracts, accountancy fees for tax repayments and of course the wages of our staff which we want to keep as they are also now in limbo.

The work that we do is so important. It is terribly paid and extremely hard work with very long hours, but it’s rewarding and so enjoyable. Make Town has become a valuable asset to Hackney and London, and we want to raise enough moolah to jump form one shop to the next as efficiently as possible.

We want to fight for Make Town to stay up and running, so if you can spare a few quid to help ‘Make Town Great Again’ we will not fail you.

Please and thank you a million times over.

Tumeke x Arohanui x

Brooke Dennis
Make Town