BE ON THE EAST END INDEPENDENTS MAP!
In order to make our community as accessible as possible, membership now starts at just £5 a month or £60 a year. Those who can pay more support those who cannot. To be on our 10th-anniversary maps you must join the Guild by the following deadlines for each borough!
– Tower Hamlets deadline: midnight Monday 17th Oct
– Hackney deadline: Midnight Wednesday 19th Oct
– Waltham Forest deadline: midnight 24th Oct
JOIN HERE TODAY!
To mark our 10th-anniversary artists and designers Rob Ryan for Tower Hamlets, Sam Brewster and Matt Curtis for Waltham Forest and Duplikat Press for Hackney are creating unique edition maps for our members located in each borough. For the first time, we will be incorporating the Bengali Language for the Tower Hamlets publication. While rooted in the local community, this celebration of the kaleidoscopic breadth of the Guild’s membership will also feed into the national Small Business Saturday campaign, which takes place on 3rd December 2022 when our maps will be distributed to the public via our members and partners.
Members old and new can take advantage of and contribute to the Guild’s #SmallBizSat social media drive. Starting in November we will leverage art, photography and storytelling as content for our social media platforms to help boost visibility and make members’ online presence more impactful with their collective social media reach of well over 1 million!
Through creating and distributing our maps we enhance community wealth by commissioning local suppliers for each borough. The map is a unifying creation, giving local small businesses a sense of comradeship and belonging to a community that helps to generate economic resilience that is so urgently needed during these intensely challenging times.
All members will be invited to our very special 10-Year Anniversary Party on 23rd November at The Bishopsgate Institute where their maps will be hot off the press ready to be collected! Co-founder of the Guild The Gentle Author will be giving an illustrated lecture at the event. And on Small Business Saturday they will reveal the diverse histories of the shops that make the place and tell the story of the origins of the East End Trades Guild in the traditional heartland for small traders and independent endeavours via a tailor-made East End Trades Guild Tour of Spitalfields! Tours of Hackney and Waltham Forest will be supported by Alternative London.
“A lot of our customers are small businesses and it was really helpful to show them the map and talk about small businesses working together for common interests. Customers visiting London were really interested in using the map to shop in other local businesses” Robyn Sims, Square Root Soda.
“The Map gives me the edge over Search Engine Optimisation. I have an online presence but not the SEO budget of a big multiple company! I have used the map to refer my customers to local services and retailers. Others have used the map to refer customers to me rather than telling them to search for opticians in Hackney. I can not compete with the SEO of my Direct competitors (Specsavers) who are literally next door! The map supports The High Street and ‘Brick & Mortar’ shops Locally” Margaret Asare, Eye London Opticians.
All new members will be met in person by a local Guild representative who will welcome them and bring them a window sticker and tote bag and be informed about how they benefit not only from the East End Independents publication but by contributing and gaining from the many Guild initiatives such as;
Events – assemblies, socials, training, and workshops with trading & collaboration opportunities – optional discounts and mutual support between members.
RENTCHECK – revolutionary new app assisting members to share knowledge and negotiate better deals on their rent with a free initial consultation with our legal partners CBG Law.
EETG Cultural Group – an internal caucus led by and for our Black and ethnic minority members to support each other. Community Organising – collective and strategic action on common interests such as our Small Business Led Community Land Trust initiative.
Online Support Forums – facilitating solidarity and reciprocity between members.
Community Organising – collective and strategic action on common interests such as our Small Business Led Community Land Trust initiative
A Powerful Voice – by uniting our members on the issues that matter we make their collective voice heard by decision-makers!
The Guild would like to give a special thanks to our sponsors CBG Law to members Wood Street Walls and co-founder The Gentle Author for their support WITH this initiative!