We’ve been blown away by the creativity, ambition and community spirit behind the first round of Haringey Unearthed applications.

In total, 184 applications were assessed by our decision-making panel: a group of Haringey residents from across the borough who came together to consider the ideas submitted and help decide which projects would receive funding or progress to the next stage. With so many brilliant ideas to consider, the panel had their work cut out!

More than one in five applications focused on children and young people under 25, while others were designed for or led by a wide range of communities, including Black, African and Caribbean communities, LGBTQI+ communities, disabled people, older residents and people of Turkish and/or Kurdish heritage. Many applications were also open to everyone.

Visual arts and heritage/cultural celebration were the two most popular areas, each accounting for around a fifth of applications, but we received ideas spanning everything from creative wellbeing, literature, food, fashion and public art to music, performance, festivals, crafts and more. Many of the projects were also multidisciplinary, bringing different creative practices together in exciting ways.

Now, we’re delighted to introduce the 13 projects awarded funding through Round 1 of Haringey Unearthed. From community singing and stores and murals and music videos, these projects reflect just some of the brilliant ideas and creative energy coming from across Haringey. Meet the people behind them and discover what they’re going to bring to the borough.

Community Grants

Our Community Grants provide up to £700 to support creative projects and events that bring Haringey residents together and celebrate the people, places, stories and creativity that make our borough unique.

Successful projects were ones that demonstrated both strong creative ideas and meaningful social impact. Applicants also had to show how their idea responded to the priorities and themes of our programme, like ‘Rebel Borough’ or ‘Art in Unexpected Places’. 

Unlike our other grant types, Community Grants fund events on a rolling basis, so you don’t have to wait for Haringey’s official year as London Borough of Culture to deliver your project. In the decision-making process for Community Grants, priority is given to events which can tie in to wider celebrations in the cultural calendar (for example, observances like Black History Month or International Women’s Day, or festivals such as Christmas, Hanukkah and Diwali). This means some funded events will be happening very soon, so keep an eye out for coming announcements! 

For Round 1, 16 eligible Community Grant applications were considered, with 4 projects selected to receive funding.

Here are our Community Grant awardees! 

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Harmony x Ultra Kolor: Community Mural Spray Jam

Harmony Gardens x Ultrakolor will bring a new community mural to Tottenham’s Harmony Gardens, celebrating both the nature of the garden and the people who grow, volunteer and spend time there.

With Haringey Unearthed funding, local young people and community members will help shape the mural through three creative workshops, working alongside Ultrakolor Art Studio to develop ideas for the finished artwork. The mural will bring together imagery from the garden - including solitary bees, butterflies and flowers - with people, hands and smiles representing the diversity of the local community.

The workshops will create an opportunity for local residents to get involved in the creative process, with participants recruited through local youth groups, schools, residents’ groups, football teams and the Broadwater Farm Community Centre.

Find out more about Harmony Gardens via their website and Instagram.

Explore Ultrakolor’s work on their website and Instagram. 

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Singing for Haringey Mums: Find Your Voice, Find Your Village 

Singing for Haringey Mums will be a friendly, relaxed community singing project bringing women together across Haringey through music, connection and wellbeing.

Led by musician and mum of two Maria Grapsa, the project will run four family-friendly sessions between October 2026 and March 2027, taking place in community and children’s centres across Haringey. Women of all ages, backgrounds and musical abilities are welcome, with or without children, and babies and pre-school children are warmly invited too.

There’s no singing experience needed as songs will be taught by ear using simple, accessible techniques, with a repertoire inspired by musical traditions from around the world, including Africa, Latin America, the Caribbean, Turkey, Greece and Albania. There’ll be everything from lullabies and seasonal folk songs to melodic mantras and contemporary songs, reflecting Haringey’s rich cultural diversity.

The sessions offer a chance to pause, breathe, sing together and meet other women, helping to reduce isolation and build connections between women from different communities. And children can join in too, soaking up the sounds and harmonies around them.

The project will culminate in a special International Women’s Day celebration on 8 March 2027, bringing the community together to celebrate what they’ve created.

Find out more about Maria and her work on her website and Instagram.

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Unfixed Costumes

Unfixed Costumes is a creative doll-customisation workshop exploring the relationship between queer identity, dolls and self-expression.

As part of LGBTQI+ History Month, curator Evie Power-Charles will bring 20 LGBTQIA+ Haringey residents aged 18+ together at Bruce Castle Museum & Archives to create their own characters using second-hand dolls, clothing, accessories and craft materials.

The workshop will explore the long-standing connection between dolls and queer identity – from childhood experiences of being told what toys we could or couldn’t play with, to the ways dolls have offered opportunities for imagination and self-expression.

Participants will finish by writing about their characters and taking part in a group ‘show and tell’. With their permission, some of the finished dolls may become part of Bruce Castle Museum & Archives’ LGBTQ+ collection, creating contemporary artefacts that capture the experiences and identities of Haringey’s LGBTQIA+ community. Participants will also take home a Polaroid of their creation.

You can follow Evie on Instagram.

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Crowning Ourselves

Crowning Ourselves is a creative project celebrating Black hair, beauty, identity and self-expression through art, delivered by artist Kennyhoopss.

Taking place during Black History Month, the project will bring Black women and men in Haringey together for a free creative workshop exploring the cultural significance of Black hair. Participants will create their own sculptural artworks using mannequin heads, hair, textiles, yarn, felt, paint, gems and other materials, with each piece reflecting their identity and lived experience.

Alongside their artwork, participants will write short reflections about what their hair means to them. The project will then culminate in a free public exhibition, bringing the artworks and personal stories together in a celebration of Black hair, creativity, identity and community.

The workshop is due to be held on October 23rd - you can find out more here!

Follow Kennyhoopss on Instagram.

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Small, Emerging and Legacy Grants

Alongside our Community Grants, Haringey Unearthed also offers three larger grant programmes for projects taking place between May 2027 and the end of March 2028:

• Small Grants: £700–£5,000
• Emerging Grants: £5,000–£10,000
• Legacy Grants: £10,000–£40,000

These grants follow a two-tier assessment process. In Tier 1, applicants answer a set of questions about their project idea, which are reviewed by the decision-making panel. The strongest applications then progress to Tier 2, where they are assessed in more detail against the programme’s published criteria.

For Round 1, 17 applications progressed to Tier 2. These were assessed against criteria including creative quality and experience, how the project responds to Haringey Unearthed’s priorities and themes, the strength of the delivery plan, public engagement and accessibility, partnerships, value for money, evaluation and longer-term impact, and engagement with priority communities.

We’re delighted to announce that 9 projects have now been awarded funding across the Small, Emerging and Legacy Grant programmes. Read on to discover the successful projects and find out more about the ideas that will be brought to life across Haringey!

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Small

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Queer Birders London 

Queer Birders London is an inclusive LGBTQ+ birding group helping people connect with nature, their local environment and each other. The group runs bird walks across Haringey’s parks and green spaces, creating welcoming opportunities to learn about local wildlife, meet like-minded people and spend time outdoors.

Recent walks have included spotting woodpeckers feeding their young in Downhills Park and combining birdwatching with a litter pick along the New River Pathway. The group is also expanding into creative and social activities, from drawing, painting and zine-making to bird-themed crafts, games and film nights, alongside talks from birding professionals on topics including bird ringing, wildlife-friendly gardening and the challenges facing urban wildlife.

With Haringey Unearthed funding, Queer Birders London will be able to expand its programme and make activities more accessible, including through additional binoculars and venue hire. Events are free or pay-what-you-can, helping to ensure that cost isn’t a barrier to taking part.

By bringing LGBTQ+ communities together around the natural world, the group hopes to help more people discover and care for the wildlife and green spaces on their doorstep.

You can get involved with Queer Birders London by following them on Instagram.

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808g Music Video 

808g’s music video, ‘Invasion’, directed by Tobias Tercic, will bring the Selk’nam Hain rite of passage into a contemporary Haringey setting, exploring heritage, identity and what it means to build a life far from home.

The Selk’nam are an Indigenous people from Tierra del Fuego in southern Argentina and Chile, with a rich cultural heritage that was devastated through colonial contact. As artists from Argentina, 808g want to explore and celebrate this heritage on this side of the world, reimagining the Hain through music, performance and visual storytelling.

The project will begin with a free mask-making workshop led by artist Tito Vega in collaboration with Pueblito Paisa Community Centre. Bringing together an intergenerational group from Haringey’s Latine community, participants will learn about traditional mask-making, share cultural knowledge and create masks to use in the music video.

The film will follow Latine Londoners as they prepare to recreate the Hain, travelling through everyday Haringey spaces before coming together in Queen’s Wood. The ritual’s confrontation with spirits will be reimagined as a metaphor for the experiences of new and second-generation Latine immigrants navigating life in the UK.

The project aims to create a meaningful shared creative experience for Haringey’s Latine community, strengthening local cultural connections while celebrating Selk’nam heritage. The finished film will premiere at a live 808g gig.

This Haringey Unearthed Grant was made possible due to the support of the National Lottery Heritage Fund!

You can listen to 808g’s music and see Tobias’ work on Instagram.

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Emerging
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While You Wait 

‘While You Wait’ will transform a working launderette on Green Lanes into an unexpected live music venue, bringing four free Sunday afternoon performances to Harringay between May and July 2027.

Led by musician Maria Chiara Argirò, each 90-minute event will bring together three musicians working across electronic, ambient and improvisational music, with a different lineup of guests for each performance. There are no tickets and no expectation of prior knowledge – residents can stay for the whole performance, drop in for a few minutes, or simply listen while doing their washing.

The project aims to make live music feel part of everyday community life, creating opportunities for connection and participation among people who might not usually attend arts and music events. Local residents will also be involved as volunteer hosts, photographers and writers, with a printed programme distributed across the area.

Working with the launderette at 603 Green Lanes, ‘While You Wait’ will bring experimental music into a familiar neighbourhood space while celebrating the people and places that make Green Lanes what it is. Each event will also be professionally filmed and photographed, creating a lasting archive of the project.

You can visit Maria’s website, and follow Maria and While You Wait on Instagram.

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Nenemin Türküsü (My Grandmother's Song)

‘Nenemin Türküsü’ (My Grandmother’s Song) is a community heritage and music project celebrating the lullabies, songs and stories passed down through Turkish and Kurdish communities in Haringey.

Led by musician, composer and educator Levent Canen, the project will bring families, elders, young people and community members together to share songs in Turkish and Kurdish dialects, alongside the memories, stories and migration experiences connected to them. At the heart of the project is the bağlama, an instrument deeply connected to the musical traditions of Anatolia.

Through workshops, informal gatherings and recording sessions, participants will explore traditional songs and the stories behind them, creating opportunities for older generations to share their knowledge while younger people reconnect with their linguistic and cultural heritage. Selected lullabies will be professionally arranged and recorded with local musicians, creating an album and digital archive featuring lyrics, translations, personal stories and cultural context.

The project is rooted in the idea that cultural heritage isn’t something that belongs only to the past: it lives through the people who remember it, share it and reinterpret it. ‘Nenemin Türküsü’ will create a bridge between generations, while encouraging young people to see their cultural backgrounds as a source of creativity, identity and connection.

The project will culminate in a public listening and sharing event in Haringey, bringing families and local residents together through music, performance and conversations about heritage, migration and identity. The recordings and digital archive will also create a lasting community resource for future generations.

This Haringey Unearthed Grant was made possible due to the support of the National Lottery Heritage Fund!

You can keep up with Levent and his project to celebrate Anatolian musical heritage, Folktale, on Instagram. You can also connect with project partner, The Refugee Workers’ Cultural Association  – a group working to support Turkish, Kurdish, migrant, refugee and worker communities across London – via their website and Instagram.

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The Things That Hold Us Up

‘The Things That Hold Us Up’ is a participatory visual arts project led by Haringey-based artist Jessie Flood-Paddock, exploring the objects, routines, adaptations and acts of care that help people with long-term health conditions and hidden disabilities navigate everyday life.

Across three artist-led workshops, 10–15 Haringey residents will come together to reflect on the things that support them, from mobility aids and assistive technology to resting places, travel routes, personal rituals and community networks. Through drawing, making, conversation and creative experimentation, participants will develop new visual and sculptural artworks in a supportive and accessible environment.

Bringing together younger and older residents, the project will create opportunities to share experiences, strategies and knowledge across generations. It will focus on creativity, resourcefulness and connection rather than illness itself, celebrating experiences that are often overlooked and creating space for conversations about disability, care, belonging and community life.

The project will culminate in a free public exhibition in Haringey, alongside smaller displays of artworks, photographs and texts in everyday community spaces including libraries, community centres and health spaces. A professionally designed publication will also bring together the artworks, objects and stories created through the project, creating a lasting record of participants’ experiences and adding their voices to Haringey’s cultural memory.

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100 Days of Groceries

‘100 Days of Groceries’ is an ongoing archival art project by Wood Green-based artist Neeli Malik, documenting Haringey’s rich food-shop heritage through the voices and stories of the people who run these businesses.

Working with greengrocers, fruit and veg stands, butchers, delis, corner shops and bakeries across the borough, Malik will use interviews, photography and printmaking to capture the history of these familiar local businesses and the people behind them. The project will explore food shops as a window into the character and changing identity of Haringey, and the stories behind the everyday “quick pop to the shops”.

These stories will become an immersive public art installation inspired by a familiar corner shop. Everyday objects including wrappers, cans, receipts, boxes and shop signs will be recreated through screenprinting, with the usual packaging text replaced by the stories and voices of the people who contributed to the project. Visitors will be able to explore the installation, listen to selected interviews and add their own food-shop memories via a QR code.

The project will culminate in an exhibition in an unused retail space, alongside a programme of printmaking and storytelling activities. By transforming everyday shop objects into unexpected archives, ‘100 Days of Groceries’ will celebrate the people, places and stories that make up Haringey’s communities.

Are you a Haringey-based shopkeeper? Neeli is looking to hear from local businesses who would like to take part and share their story. Get in touch at neelimalik.art@gmail.com.

You can also follow Neeli’s work via their website and Instagram.

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Solarpunk Cities

Solarpunk Cities Festival will be a one-day celebration of art, climate action and radical ideas, inviting Haringey residents to imagine, and start building, a greener, fairer future.

Across bookshops, parks, community venues and public spaces, residents will step into a temporary “Solarpunk City”, exploring new ways of living together and responding to the climate crisis. Creative workshops will explore everything from repair culture, biomaterials and urban growing to solar energy, community publishing and cooperative economies, alongside walking workshops uncovering Haringey’s hidden rivers, green spaces and radical histories.

The festival aims to leave people with new skills, connections and confidence, showing that imagining a different future can be the first step towards building one together.

You can stay up-to-date with events from the London School of Solarpunk on Instagram.

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Legacy

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Unearthed Sounds

Unearthed Sounds is a free, year-long music programme bringing artist development into Haringey’s schools, libraries, youth hubs and neighbourhoods. At its heart is a solar-powered DJ van that will act as a mobile stage and studio, taking music-making and performance opportunities directly into local communities.

Young people aged 11–18 will take part in ten-week artist development programmes across four Haringey secondary schools, developing skills in music production, songwriting, singing, rapping and DJing. They’ll have opportunities to share their work through school showcases and public pop-up performances, before progressing to free recording, production and rehearsal sessions in local libraries and community spaces.

The DJ van will bring young artists’ original music to estates, parks, markets and high streets, giving them a platform to perform in the neighbourhoods they call home as well as at London Borough of Culture events. The programme will create a pathway from a first creative experience to recording, live performance and potential careers in Haringey’s creative industries.

DJMC Academy will also train local staff and youth ambassadors to deliver studio sessions themselves, helping to build skills and create lasting opportunities within Haringey’s youth spaces. With free participation throughout, ‘Unearthed Sounds’ aims to give young people the tools, platforms and confidence to make music and build their creative futures.

Learn more about the DJMC Academy’s work via their website and on Instagram. 

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LegalAliens Theatre

‘Through the Storm’ is a year-long theatre project led by LegalAliens Theatre, bringing together Haringey’s migrant, refugee and wider communities to explore what happens when the things we share are forgotten, and how stories, creativity and connection can bring people back together.

At the heart of the project is a storm: a theatrical metaphor for the challenges people face when their world is disrupted, from migration and loneliness to political division, economic hardship, climate anxiety and personal loss. Using Shakespeare’s ‘The Tempest’ as a starting point, alongside newspaper headlines, songs, poetry, oral histories and personal testimonies, participants will explore how people respond when the world around them is changing.

The project will begin with the weekly Tottenham Project at the Engine Room, a free multilingual and movement-based programme for refugees and migrants. Participants will also have opportunities to develop creative leadership skills and co-lead the project, while storytelling and theatre workshops with local schools, young people and community groups will bring more voices and experiences into the work. Two Rebel Makers theatre camps will give children aged 8–12 the chance to get involved too.

All of these stories and creative contributions will come together in a major outdoor performance along the Tottenham Canal in August 2027, combining scenes, songs, testimonies, images and physical theatre. The production will then be adapted for further performances at venues including Jacksons Lane, Park View School and the Engine Room.

With more than 300 people expected to take part, ‘Through the Storm’ will celebrate Haringey’s many cultures and communities while giving migrant and refugee residents opportunities not only to participate in cultural activity, but to help shape and lead it.

You can follow LegalAliens Theatre on Instagram, visit Legalalienstheatre.com, or watch a glimpse of their Tottenham Project on YouTube.

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What’s Next?

With funding rounds opening every three months until March 2028, there’s much more to come from Haringey Unearthed!

As the first grants have been awarded, we now have a number of Community Grant funded events coming up across Haringey, so keep an eye out for your chances to get involved, meet the people behind the projects and experience some of the brilliant creative activity being supported through the programme.

The decision-making panel has now met and also selected the projects that will be receiving a Haringey Unearthed Grant from Round 2 of our applications, which ran during September of this year. Round 2 was exclusively open for Community Grants applications, which means there’s lots of creative activity coming to Haringey in the next few months. We will be announcing these awardees soon! 

Meanwhile, if reading about these exciting projects has given you an idea of your own, then good news – our next round of Haringey Unearthed funding will open on 16 November 2026, with Community, Small, Emerging and Legacy Grants all available. You can find out more about Haringey Unearthed on our Grants page, or come along to a Haringey Unearthed Coffee Morning on the first Thursday of every month to meet the team. Keep an eye on our newsletter and our social channels for updates, application guidance and announcements. 

Congratulations to all the successful applicants so far, and we can’t wait to see what everyone comes up with next!