It is the time of the year when awards are handed out – at the Oscars, the Golden Globes, the BAFTAs and the BRITs – and excellence is recognised. Closer to home, in Hackney, the excellent work of the heroes who make our community what it is has been recognised in the Love Hackney awards. The results are out, the awards collected, and this week The Hackney Post has spoken to a few of the award winners.
The Love Hackney award: Juliet Coley, author, publisher, and retired teacher
By the time Juliet Coley was nine, she had been all over the world: to “Narnia, Bethlehem, and Wonderland” – and all without getting on a plane.
Juliet’s grandparents came over on the Windrush, and her family has always valued “the power of reading”. She has lived in Hackney all her life and, growing up in Pembury Estate, she was a “Hackney Library girl”. But when she wrote her first book at the age of 15, she couldn’t get it published.
Ten years ago, she had a heart attack. Her seven-year-old son, Romeo, wrote a book called Life Without My Mummy. Inspired by her son, she published her first book, a memoir called 39 Weeks: Life Behind the School Gates. Since then, she has written and published five more books. She is not as prolific as the now 17-year-old Romeo who is currently working on his tenth book.
When his mother published Romeo’s book, it boosted his confidence so much that she started helping his friends and classmates do the same – even helping to publish books by 19 primary school children in Ghana.
She was Senior Deputy Head at Gladesmore Community School in Haringey until she retired in 2019, and in 2022 she won a British Citizen Award, which she received in Parliament.
After winning the Love Hackney Award – given to an individual who best embodies Hackney’s diversity and history – she said: “I’ve won a few awards, but this one was very special because it’s Hackney, the place where I’m from, where I was a little girl who grew up on the Pembury Estate.”
She added: “Recently, we’ve had the Oscars, the Brit Awards, the Golden Globes. But if I was a singer or an actor, the Love Hackney awards would mean more to me because I’m Hackney through and through.”
The High Street Hero Award: A&S Cycles
Since 1984, A&S Cycles has been the go-to shop for the cycling needs of people in Lower Clapton and the wider Hackney area.
Now, it is also the winner of the 2025 High Street Hero award. A&S Cycles was founded by current owner Sham Vesamia’s late husband Solly when he was 19. A football lover and a cycling enthusiast, Solly died in 2013 from Myositis, a rare disease. Since then a football tournament for local primary schools, the Solly Cup, has been held in his honour.
The business is now run by Sham and her son Eisa. They said that they are proud to support their community and make cycling a part of its “everyday lifestyle”.
Sham said: “Words cannot express how thankful I am to receive this award, [nor] what it means to myself and my family.”
Sham added: “I am grateful to everyone who has always been a part of my journey, from my family to friends, team and especially my customers, who often feel like one big A&S family.
“I am deeply honoured and grateful to receive this award. Thank you to the community of Hackney for recognising my efforts.”
The Greener Hackney award and the Community Group of the Year: Core Landscapes/Core Arts Volunteer Project
To win one Love Hackney award is a formidable achievement; but to win two is a sure testament to how invaluable your volunteering contributions are to the local community.
Core Landscapes / Core Art Volunteer Project has done exactly that. Not only is it the Community Group of the Year, but it has also won the Greener Hackney Award.
The group has five green spaces in Hackney, all of them near the Core Arts centre in Homerton, and the largest of these is a community garden behind St Barnabas church, Homerton High Street. Here it has a polypod, which is a combination between a polytunnel and a greenhouse, and lots of benches and footpaths to encourage visitor engagement.
Nemone Mercer, 54, project director, said that its green spaces have “lots of different types of planting … that people could replicate easily in a small space” and it hopes to “demonstrate different approaches, which you could do yourself”.
She added: “We offer solutions to positively change local environments from grassroots up, and we focus on what can be achieved collaboratively and inclusively.”
She said that she thinks it won the awards, not only “because we’re great”, but “because we have a really strong committed group of volunteers”.
She added that she was “absolutely amazed that we got both. I was really hoping that we’d get one, but didn’t think for a second that we’d get both of them. I was absolutely blown away, and I feel very proud”.
Business of the Year: Arbeit Studios
Hackney’s business of the year, Arbeit Studios, began repurposing unused buildings and warehouses as studios for aspiring artists in 2010. By 2025, they had transformed 250 units across London. The studios act as hubs for creatives with facilities like cafes, fitness clubs, and podcast studios.
Nimrod Vardi, Arbeit Studios’ 42-year-old founder and creative director, said: “We have a lot of freelance artists. Ninety percent of our tenants are creatives. We are always looking for new sites, either here in the borough or the city, we would like to keep crafting these creative places that support the community.”
Vardi emphasized that his studios are not “copy-pastes,” but instead are designed specifically for each client. Vardi also stressed the importance of finding the right locations, both to ensure financial sustainability and to build trust with local communities.
At their Towbridge Garden Gallery in Hackney Wick, it becomes difficult not to glory in the displays that fill the studio space. These pieces, despite varying in subject matter, do not compete against each other. They instead support each other, creating a diverse and artistic environment.
The “Let’s Be Eco-Logical” exhibition, by ReRooted Residency artist Anita Agarwal, is currently the gallery’s centerpiece, and features a variety of artworks that focus on themes like sustainability and diversity – for example, windchimes constructed with repurposed single-use plastics and flags, inspired by Buddhist prayer traditions.
Reacting to receiving the Business of the Year Award, Vardi said, “We are very, very happy. We are very, very proud. It’s testimony to our very hard work and the help of our partners and our community.”