Stitching Lives, Making Place: Turkish and Kurdish Women and the Making of Hackney since the 1980s

Since the 1980s, Turkish and Kurdish women have played a vital yet often overlooked role in shaping Hackney’s economy, streets, and community life. This talk by Feride Kumbasar traces how women’s paid and unpaid labour—from garment workshops to family-run shops, cafés, and restaurants—sustained households, built local economies, and helped create the vibrant food culture that attracts visitors to the borough. Drawing on oral histories and community-based research, the talk also highlights women’s contributions in education, health, and local public services, where they supported families and advocated for safer and more inclusive local policies. Beyond work, it explores how women made place through community organising, centres, mutual support networks, and activism. In turn, the social and urban spaces of Hackney shaped women’s identities, senses of belonging, and everyday lives. By centring women’s voices, the talk offers a re-reading of Hackney’s history as one stitched together through labour, care, resilience, and collective struggle. Part of @thehackneysociety 's Hackney History Festival at Chat's Palace Hackney, May 2026, filmed by ‪@worldwrite‬ #hackney #trades #turkish #kurdish #hackneyhistoryfestival