Modern Cockney Festival brings Cockneydom into the 21st Century with a call out to challenge traditional perceptions and embrace your ‘inner Cockney’
A partnership between the Bengali East End Heritage Society and Grow Social Capital, the Modern Cockney Festival is a celebration of the culture, heritage, and future of ‘non-posh Londoners’ annually during March to challenge traditional perceptions and negative stereotypes of Cockney identity.
It highlights how the modern idea of Cockney goes beyond its ‘old school’ heartlands; how ‘Bow Bells is heard through the heart’; and includes a Cockney Diaspora mainly found in a region called ‘Cockneydom’ – spanning much of the south east of England – defined by the spread of traditional Pie’n’Mash shops serving the Cockney staple dish.
The Festival celebrates an identity that spans generations, as well as what it calls a ‘New School Cockney’ among new waves of non-posh Londoners and how social identities in modern-day Britain tend to be more complex and multi-layered. For instance, in London, people are more likely to define themselves by a fusion of labels such as Cockney Bengali, Cockney Black, Essex or Kent Cockney and many more different cocktails of identity.
The Cockney Formula
In a previous Festival, a ‘Cockney Formula’ was devised that identifies an intricate inter-relationship between 52 different variables that create what we know as ‘Cockney’:
though as comedian Arthur Smith puts its more simply: ‘non-posh Londoners’
Tackling cliches, debunking stereotypes
Tackling popular misconceptions, the Festival goes beyond traditional perceptions and stereotypes, such as rhyming slang or on-screen villains, to spotlight a vibrant, evolving, thriving culture based on positive, inclusive values of resilience and defiance, resourcefulness, underpinned by a stoic and irreverent wit, qualities to help people feel stronger, more powerful and purposeful, more together with others, to overcome adversity and setbacks in modern-day life.
in 2023, the Festival successfully petitioned Tower Hamlets Council to recognise Cockney as a community language and produced a report with the University of Warwick, A Cockney Blueprint for Tower Hamlets, to guide the Council on implementing its new policy.
Highlights of previous festivals include:
- The Story of Cockney in 50 Objects which has been curated into a ‘pocket museum’, a deck of cards telling the story in 50 objects.
- Instigating National Pie’n’Mash Week celebrating the traditional Cockney cuisine.
- Modern Cockney Kids festival with family-friendly events at the Museum of London Docklands and the Whitechapel Gallery.
- Speak Cockney Day on Sunday 3 March (the ‘fird of the ‘fird)
- Talks covering subjects such as:
- How being a Cockney is good for your health
- Cockney speech and dialects, with rare recordings from the British Library
- Inspiring Cockney women
- Cockney humour being explored with comedian Arthur Smith
- The future of street markets
- The 300-year-old story of Black Cockneys
- Social prejudice faced by Cockneys in the creative industries
- Discrimination against working class cultures
- Ruby Murray – the story of Curry and Cockneys
- Encouraging children to design a ‘Cockney kilt’ at the Modern Cockney Kids Festival
- Inspiring Cockneys around the world to create their own ‘bubble events’ wherever they live to celebrate their Cockney identity
Festival co-founder and founder of the Bengali East End Heritage Society, Saif Osmani says:
“Cockney is alive and well, although evolving and different to many people’s perceptions and stereotypes. A Cockney identity is an emotional connection, an affinity with the ‘non-posh Londoner’, where ‘Bow Bells are heard through the heart.’ The Festival serves as a call out to all Cockneys, who connect with the 660 year-old identity, to embrace their inner Cockney”
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