The New ‘Creative’Brick Lane

Abstract

This article is a narrative study of local multicultural encounters taking place along Brick Lane in East London, UK. Although the area has been primarily researched for its Bangladeshi community, this article focuses on the ‘creative’ professionals who work and/or reside within the vicinity. It is a narrative investigation into their attitudes towards difference, ethnicity and the ethnic self. A multiplicity of local multicultural tales comes to the fore. In short, the multicultural realities of the area become narrated in many different ways, which clearly manifest a narrative complexity, unfolding within the new ‘creative’ Brick Lane. These different local multicultural narratives could also be indicative of the ways that multicultural meaning is created within London at large.