Swapping seats, swapping numbers: Jewish creatives find each other in Hackney

By the time dessert arrived at Blinds in Hackney on Wednesday evening, half the room had changed seats. I watched people who had walked in as strangers lean across tables, swap phone numbers and sketch out projects between courses. A movement director and a theatre director who had never met were already talking about making something together; a writer and a director had the bones of a new piece. None of it had existed that morning.

That, in a sentence, is what the evening set out to do.

The night was the work of YYY, the creative platform founded by Gaby Maestro and Anna Mimran, which has built a reputation for bringing emerging talent together. The UK Jewish Arts Foundation (JAF), which I chair and which exists to build a future for Jewish creativity across the UK, was behind it. Together we brought some forty young creatives into one room with a deceptively simple aim: to get them talking. Theatre-makers, filmmakers, visual artists, writers and fashion designers, many of whom had never crossed paths, sat down to dinner not knowing who they would leave knowing.

And what a table it was. The food came from the acclaimed chef Helen Graham, whose cooking turned the meal into something close to a performance in its own right, a reminder that food, too, is one of the creative disciplines we exist to champion. The room helped, too: warm and easy, run by a team who made the whole evening feel effortless.

If that sounds like a good party, it was. But it was also something more deliberate. We work across three pillars (Futures, Forum and Fund), and the dinner was Futures in action: reaching the younger and emerging artists who too often sit outside the established structures of support, and giving them a genuine way in. Not a scheme on paper or a form to fill in, but a chair at a table and a roomful of peers.

It was, quite simply, an amazing gathering, and a great group of people. For a relatively small investment, I saw real collaboration happen in front of me. That is what we believe in: connecting people, backing their ideas, and trusting Jewish creativity to do the rest.

The thinking behind it is almost stubbornly modest. A small amount of support, spent well, can unlock a great deal. A dinner is not a building or an endowment. But put the right people in the right room and the collaborations begin on their own: a director here, a designer there, a writer who needed exactly the producer sitting two seats away. Already, guests are being invited to artists’ open studios to see the work for themselves. Our wager is that these connections are where new work is born, and that nurturing them is some of the highest-value, lowest-cost work a funder can do.

It matters now, too. Jewish life in Britain is so often discussed through the language of politics and difficulty; an evening like this offered an entirely different register, one of imagination, generosity and sheer creative appetite.

One of our guests, Omri Cohen, captured it better than I could. “It is rare to find a place that immediately feels safe and welcoming. Bringing such fascinating people from different sectors of the creative world, the YYY JAF event provided an open environment, allowing us to connect, share information about our projects, our challenges and our story, all whilst enjoying amazing food! I can’t wait for the next time we get together again and the collaborative possibilities born from the lovely conversations.”

None of it happens without the people behind it. The evening was hosted by YYY and backed by us at the UK Jewish Arts Foundation, with some of our founders and working group, Rose Prevezer, Mark Stevenson and Marc Shelkin of Joice Media, and photography by Natalie Ohana-Cole. Parallel Skies, the new record label founded by Josh Breslaw and Nigel Canin, added a contribution too, and that matters to us: drawing in other creatives who want to back this kind of work, and connecting them to our collaborations, is exactly the role we are built to play.

For all our optimism, we know the bigger task remains. “A key issue for UKJAF is creating the conditions for a vibrant and well-sourced future for Jewish arts in the UK,” says Alistair Falk, our chief executive. “Events such as this remind us that learning from artists’ lived experience and responding to their creative ideas are the best ways forward to build this future.”

We are a new charity, launched in October 2025, and we are ambitious about what comes next. Our Forum is already bringing the major Jewish arts organisations together, and a sector-wide conversation is under way, mapping the state of Jewish creativity across the UK. Developing a Fund is a firm priority for us. We do not have one in place yet, but we are determined to build a sustainable, long-term source of investment to seed new work and bring finished projects over the line. Wednesday night was a glimpse of why all of it is worth building.

Half the room changed seats. Numbers were swapped. New work began. For those of us who believe the next chapter of Jewish creativity is still waiting to be written, that is precisely the point.

Tania Black of chair of trustees at the UK Jewish Arts Foundation