===== background =====

Lenthall Road Workshop was established as a feminist community screen printing and photography workshop in 1976. By the mid 1980s the workshop had developed a policy whereby the members of the collective reflected the class and ethnic background of the area (Hackney) in which the workshop was situated. In part this was to try and encourage the greater use of the facilities by local black and working class women. Describing their aims in 1986 the collective wrote this: 
'Our work is aimed at opening up the skills and technology of communication which is otherwise restricted to a narrow social section able to specialise, qualify and afford the privilege. we prioritise work with women, working class and minority groups for whom communication has a special relevance. Being female or a member of any of the minority groups has traditionally meant exclusion from whole areas of public life, becoming 'invisible' or being represented (or misrepresented) as seen from a 'mainstream' point of view.'

'We see opportunities for women, working class people, and minority groups to control for oursleves the way in which we are publicly seen and the way we interpret our experience, as constructive and relevant to the whole community. It is crucial for us to encourage use of the workshop by those who have needs consonat with those of the workshop ie. people wishing to produce strong and positive images of women. minority groups etc, which challenge and don't reinforce damaging stereotypes.'

'We describe ourselves as a collective. meaning that out organisational and policy decisions are arrived at by group discussions and consensus. We have no official hierarchy, but unofficial hierarchies are hard to eliminate. To cope with this we have an entirely female collective (at a stroke avoiding male/female dominance struggles) Again graduations of social class can sometimes produce delusions of 'natural leadership' and this has to some extent been ironed out by having a group the majority of whom are 'working' as opposed to 'ruling' class. Our work is very practically based and all our tasks are shared depending upon who is available when a particular piece of work is started, which avoids factions based around conflicts of interest. Finally all of us are black or of mixed race and this is a very unifying factor in the context of a predominantly white society. It is an unusually supportive working situation.' (//from Kenna et al. 1986//)

===== images =====
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===== narratives =====

=====  sources/links/further info =====

  * Orders, Ron. //Director// (1980) **Somewhere in Hackney**. Film about four community arts projects in Hackney, including Lenthall Road Workshop.
  * Kenna, Carol; Medcalf,Lyn; Walker, Rick. (1986) **Printing is Easy…? Community Printshops 1970-1986** Greenwich Mural Workshop pp36-37