Determined to tackle social issues in a playful and responsive way, Kiran Chahal has spent the last 20 years building grassroots place-making projects that redress imbalances and empower people to co-design their own inclusive spaces.
Kiran's work is centred around connecting, nourishing, and empowering diverse communities to make a positive mark on our environments. With a background in socially engaged design, she has transformed civic spaces, set up interventions, and programmed events for public health authorities and local councils, while also running People’s Kitchen in East London for 10 years, inviting local people to co-create weekly community feasts from food waste.
Her initiatives Made Up Collective and Made Up Kitchen were born from a desire to create opportunities for underrepresented communities to co-lead in place-making and civic change projects, joyfully championing collective energy and skills to counter the lack of equity in who designs public spaces.
Made up Collective CIC is an ever-changing group of socially active facilitators that work across different forms, creating spaces- from 700m of hoarding artworks across Barking to a summer-long 200sqm Pallet Pavilion made from surplus and hosting free events, from an outdoor cinema, music events, parkour, art and planting workshops. Made Up Collective is inclusive and innovative, harnessing their skills as architects, spacial designers, community activists, and social change makers.
Made Up Kitchen is another arm of the collective, that began life at Passing Clouds in Dalston with two years of community feasts that brought people together. Sadly the community venue closed in 2015, but Kiran didn’t let that stop her, and continued organising fortnightly feasts, where families and young people cook and eat together at the Kingsmead Estate and the Dalston Eastern Curve Garden. The pandemic gave a new focus to Made Up Kitchen. Kiran partnered with RISE 365 and over 6 months they made nearly 35,000 culturally appropriate meals, delivered to residents by car and by foot. This transitioned into Kingsmead Community Shop, a social supermarket with the aim to make a more empowering model with over 40 local volunteers of all ages. This collaboration has grown to enable young black leaders from RISE365 to take a lead in social change, with support from Made Up Kitchen. Kiran is keen to reframe power structures, in particular moving away from providing ‘aid’ to people and instead empowering people to create change together.
“I believe real change comes from setting up structures and providing tools and skills so projects can continue without us there. I'm passionate about creativity as a tool for healing, tackling food poverty, improving mental wellbeing, social isolation and creating more representation in communities".
Kiran
Looking to the future, Made up Collective has plans to set up their first community cafe and shop space in Thames Barrier Park, Newham. The aim is to seed entrepreneurial and creative opportunities and provide a space for the community to connect, where profits from selling food could be used to build responsive and critically needed community projects.
Made up Collective's vision of self-sustaining models is set to be realised in their recent partnership with developer Dominvs on the creation of a Community Pub in 2025. This will be part of student accommodation development in Stratford, with an aim to add similar social value to community initiatives in new developments. Dominvs will be providing seed funding over 3 years to grow projects and connections in Stratford leading up to opening the space.
Made Up Collective has also been fortunate to receive the support of the Tudor Trust, who will also be providing 3 years of unrestricted funding to grow this new organisation.
Kiran’s vision is to create sustainable projects that enable under-represented communities to redress the balance of equity in society, connect with one another, and influence change in their local area.
Kiran applied to be on the Multiplier programme to feel less isolated as a community leader and to give space for reflection and growth. Kiran was picked to be part of the Multiplier 2022 because of her 20 plus years of grassroots community building and bridging divides in the community. She thinks up innovative ways to connect people across different communities, and similarly to the Cares Family understands the strength when communities leverage their collective power for social good.