Sorry! The lifestyle you ordered is currently out of stock

By markontour, June 7, 2015

It's E17 Art Trail time again, the annual community-led arts programme where the good people of Walthamstow turn their homes, shops and pubs into temporary art galleries. This weekend we only had time to sample of a few of the highlights in the Village, but the Art Trail runs until 14 June so there's a bit of time to explore more. Here follows markontour's highlights written, in keeping with the departure lounge ethos of this blog, on a train to Stoke for a Sunday of boating.

See What You Missed, Vestry House Museum

Matt Taylor's clever, observational photographs capture the bits of Walthamstow life that busy people walk past in a hurry, including a note written on a brown paper bag in a shop window that informs “Mr Khan. Your balloons are next door. In Indian”; and the graffiti art on an abandoned factory exclaiming “Sorry! The lifestyle you ordered is currently out of stock.” (see above).

From Poland to Waltham Forest, Vestry House Museum

This absorbing and enriching little exhibition chronicles three periods of Polish migration to Waltham Forest over the last 150 years. First to find a home here were Polish jews fleeing Tsarist pogroms in the mid-nineteenth century. A hundred years later it was the turn of heroic Polish airmen and soldiers, who fought Hitler in the British army and RAF and subsequently settled in Waltham Forest rather than returning east. Most recently, E17 has benefited from Poland's membership of the EU and the skilled workers who have travelled here as a result. Michael Harwot, pictured above, appears typical – a trained lawyer in Poland who has worked long hours as a security guard in London while he gains legal qualification here. Told through photographs, interviews, letters and artefacts this is local history at its best.

The Ancient House, 4 Church Lane

Everyone who has walked past the fifteenth century timber framed 'Ancient House' adjacent to the Nags Head in Walthamstow Village must have wanted to have a peak inside. Now thanks to the E17 Art Trail you can cross the threshold and enjoy Paul Tuckers photographic history of the building and its contents.