The Modern Cockney Festival was conceived and run by Modern Cockney (formerly Cockney Cultures), a grassroots community partnership between the Bengali East End Heritage Society and Grow Social Capital.
The Bengali East End Heritage Society began in 2016 with an aim to highlight, retain, and restore the Bengali community’s cultural and heritage assets within the East End of London.
Grow Social Capital is a social enterprise working to address the challenge of changing levels in society of social capital- our collective ability to help each other.
The partnership Modern Cockney is a non-party political, pioneering living heritage and cultural identity project, based on inclusive values.
We challenge a narrative that ‘Cockney is dying by celebrating how it is an evolving community, containing diverse backgrounds, cultures, and beliefs, offering a powerful resource for overcoming adversity, tackling social prejudice, and building greater togetherness for anyone with an affinity with ‘non-posh Londoners’.
This year we celebrate our third Modern Cockney Festival (March 1st to 31st).
In March 2023 we successfully petitioned Tower Hamlets Council to recognise Cockney as a community language – believed to be the first-ever formal recognition of Cockney as a culture in its 660 year-plus history.
We co-produced a report with the University of Warwick, ‘‘A Cockney Blueprint for Tower Hamlets’ to inform Tower Hamlets Council how it could introduce Cockney as a community language, empower communities, challenge stereotypes, and address social division across London.
We created the first-ever National Pie’n’Mash Week in March 2024 which saw the launch of our campaign, with the support of celebrities including Danny Dyer, to secure Traditional Status Guaranteed for our traditional dish.
In October 2024 our campaign secured the first-ever debate in the House of Commons on pie’n’mash – check out the story: https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/articles/cd9898lglepo
We are launching our Modern Cockney Manifesto explaining our mission. Get your copy here
Check out this year’s Modern Cockney Festival. Do join in and support our work.