community/cultural
Manalo & White Architects, 2023
2 Cygnet Square, SE2 9FA
Situated in the heart of the Thamesmead Estate, TACO! (Thamesmead Arts and Culture Office) an artist-led organisation supporting research, production, and exchange. The space is designed by architects Manalo & White and features a gallery, events space, bookshop, cafe/bar and a broadcast studio for radio RTM.FM, all neatly packed into an 87sqm footprint.
Abbey Wood
177, 229, 244, 401, 472
Street level with step-free entry and throughout, entrance width 110cm, manually operated door with someone on hand to assist,
Seating is long benches and short stools with cushions, seating with a back can be made available. Fluorescent lighting, quiet ambient music
10:00–17:00
10:00–17:00
10:00–17:00
10:00–17:00
10:00–17:00
10:00–17:00
Family activity
10:00–16:00
Hosted at TACO! The Hundred Club Day Rave is an invitation for families to make their own daytime festival and day rave.
How to book
Please create a free visitor account to book your festival tickets.
Guided tour
14:00–15:30
with architects Manalo & White, photographer David Grandorge and artist Adam Shield.
How to book
Please create a free visitor account to book your festival tickets.
TACO! is an not-for-profit, artist-led organisation supporting research, production, and exchange in Thamesmead and SE London. We understand artistic practice to be a social tool for making the world anew. We aim to foster artists and art practices as valued, vital and useful to creative communities, civil society, and the realisation of shared equitable futures.
TACO! is conceived as an ongoing artistic enquiry that is embedded, socially engaged, and explores what art can be and do. We centre artists and the creative agency of communities in the way we develop and grow. Our activities are experimental and collaborative, supporting learning and exchange between artists, audiences, community and place.
TACO! invites artists to lead an enquiry by researching, developing and realising projects over a dedicated period of time. Projects initiated by artists vary in duration, with an open timeframe and no set expectations on outcomes, but with a focus on ‘making practice public’.
This artist research informs a diverse public programme that includes exhibitions, events, discussions, workshops, broadcasts, screenings, publishing, and co-authored participatory projects with communities, groups, children and young people.
Our collaborative and engaged participatory projects address or explore social concerns that are important to communities and people’s lived experience.
TACO!s Young Artist Projects reflect the wider ethos of our programming, we centre children and young people as artists and creative producers.
Projects are collaborative, allowing artists, children and young people to work together and lead on not only the direction of outcomes, but also new and radical ways of working.
Current YAP programme includes:
Bang Splat Whoosh, an experimental creative studio for early years children aged 1-5yrs, with artists working within Children Centres.
The Hundred Club an experimental creative space that uses arts and play for children to explore social justice issues. Free and open to 5-12yr olds and their siblings, parents and carers.
Founded in 1999, Manalo & White is a diverse and cohesive team of designers collaborating on architecture and interiors, weaving pragmatism with playfulness to create rigorous, inclusive and joyful places.
We foster collaboration, inclusivity and a good-humoured collective approach over individual ambition.
Purposeful and practical, with a focus on user needs over spectacle and showmanship, we’re known for our cross-sector versatility.
Over the last two decades we’ve completed an unusually wide range of projects around the UK, from hotels, museums and galleries to factories, schools and community halls, always with an emphasis on resourcefulness, materiality and sustainability.
We strive to ensure diverse voices are heard, communications are always open, and ego never gets in the way.
