Real Hackney Dave teams up with SlowBurn on charity prints and T-shirts for StreetSmart

SlowBurn, the restaurant housed inside Blackhorse Lane Ateliers’ denim factory in Walthamstow, E17, is collaborating with east London artist Dave Buonaguidi – who goes also by the name of Real Hackney Dave – on a limited edition art print and t-shirt campaign this October, with all proceeds going to the hospitality charity StreetSmart, which supports homeless and vulnerable people in London and across the UK.

The centrepiece of the collaboration is a run of ten A3 giclée prints, each featuring the words Slowburn Is Always a Good Idea in metallic gold leaf lettering laid over a vintage map of Walthamstow, E17. The prints are signed and numbered by the artist and priced at £95 each, with all proceeds donated to StreetSmart.

Alongside the prints, a run of 100 t-shirts will be produced – the first time Buonaguidi has worked on apparel of this kind. Available in black or white, they carry the slogan Love Slow Burn Bright in pink and red across the front, and are priced at £50, with all profits going to the charity. T-shirts can be pre-ordered through the SlowBurn website.

A further 100 smaller A5 prints, also signed by the artist, will be given to guests at a dinner hosted at SlowBurn on Thursday 15^th October. Rather than paying for the prints, diners are asked to bring a tinned food donation on the night, which will be passed on to a food bank in the E17 area.

Chavdar Todorov, SlowBurn’s chef and founder, said: “I’ve known Dave for a while, he loves SlowBurn and he’s been a regular over the years. He’s a bit of an east London legend, so when the idea came up and we asked him if he’d be up for doing this charity collab, he said yes before I’d even finished asking him! It’s been fun working with him, his work is iconic and instantly recognisable to any Londoner, so we really hope our guests enjoy the final print design and tees. And, doing it to raise funds for a hospitality-based charity like StreetSmart felt like the right thing to do, especially at this time of year.”

StreetSmart, founded in 1998, works with restaurants that add a voluntary £1 to each bill during November and December, passing the money on to homelessness charities operating in the areas where those restaurants are based. The charity’s running costs are covered by sponsors, meaning the full amount raised goes to front-line services.

Buonaguidi, a screen printer who previously spent more than three decades in advertising, works with found images and ephemera sourced from auction sites and flea markets.

SlowBurn was founded by Bulgarian-born Todorov in November 2020 and serves a plant-forward menu of sharing plates, with dinner on Friday, Saturday and Sunday and lunch at weekends, when the factory floor is not in use. Diners eat among sewing machines, bolts of denim and jeans patterns.

Food Desk

For further information, reservations and pre-orders of the t-shirts, visit SlowBurn’s website here.