Emma Warren - Make Some Space

“An amazing book about an amazing venue.” Emma-Jean Thackray

"Magic happens. It happened here, a lot. This book makes us feel like we can do it too." Gilles Peterson

“A lyrical testimony to the power of street-level social energy and creativity – and a considered and optimistic rebuke to the forces that continually seek to oppress it” Richard King, ‘Original Rockers’ and ‘The Lark Ascending’

136pp page paperback including new and exclusive photographs, detailing the colourful histories behind Total Refreshment Centre and London's new jazz explosion.

There’s an Edwardian confectionery factory in Hackney which doubles up as a time machine. 'Make Some Space' invites us through the front door of London's Total Refreshment Centre to meet a revolving cast of characters who created an accidental incubator of London’s new jazz renaissance.

The book combines Johnny Rotten’s politics teacher, new London jazz icons Shabaka Hutchings, Nubya Garcia and members of Ezra Collective, alongside Bob Marley, The Comet Is Coming, the Thompson Twins’ delay pedal, Wiley, and the 1912 Hackney mayor.

Emma Warren invites us to remember the venues and community centres that generated culture, and asks us to protect the few that remain.

“In this loving tribute to Total Refreshment Centre and the birth of the new London jazz scene we have an inspiring testimony to how community spaces can make culture come alive – and make the people that use them come alive, too. In a rapidly gentrifying city, it's a rare and beautiful thing.” Dan Hancox, 'Inner City Pressure: The Story of Grime'

“Make Some Space captures TRC’s cooperative anarchy with such verve it leaves no doubt about the relationship between spaces and creativity and why this is vital for culture to thrive” Lloyd Bradley, author of 'Sounds Like London' and 'Bass Culture'