Hackney council replaces drawing of street because it's 'too white'

A London council has been forced to re-issue the image of an historic street because an artist’s impression was “too white”.

Hackney council published the picture of the Hackney Central thoroughfare to illustrate planned changes to the recently pedestrianised Narrow Way. But after the Black and Ethnic Minority Network pointed out that almost everyone in the image was white, the council took it off their website.

A page about the Narrow Way on the website now displays an alternative picture.

In a press release entitled “Future of Hackney won’t be whitewashed”, BEMA Network spokesman Ngoma Bishop said the original image “revealed Hackney’s transformation into a borough inhabited almost entirely by young white people.”

A spokesman for architects Studio Weave, who produced the image, said it was meant to show the street rather than to represent Hackney and added: “We didn’t want to offend anyone”.