Preview: Spice Festival, Hackney Empire, London

The grand poise of the Hackney Empire provides the backdrop for this year's Spice Festival, a rollicking celebration of the London borough's cultural and artistic diversity. Tapping into a rich pool of local talent, venues in and around the Empire offer a plethora of wide-ranging entertainment and a taste of the contemporary East End.

"I wanted to really make it cross-art," says the festival programmer Corinna Pyke. "Historically, there's always been a healthy bed of artists living here, and that, married with the new influx of young people, means that there's a great platform for putting stuff on. I wanted it to reflect the diversity of Hackney."

Steven Berkoff leads a workshop adaptation of the classic film On the Waterfront which sits alongside a clutch of emerging theatrical ventures, including Journeyman, a voyage into the heart of heavyweight boxing, set to a rock'*'roll soundtrack. Elsewhere, Carl Barat's Dirty Pretty Things lend vigour to a diverse musical line-up, an evening of Music Hall nods to the Empire's past, and Michael Horovitz presents the Poetry Olympics.

"With the Olympics coming, there's a great attention on Hackney and the cultural Olympiad," says Pyke. "This for me is the blueprint of what they should be doing culturally with the Olympics as well."

Amidst the revelry, the festival also exhibits a strong sense of the social and cultural issues which affect the area. Organisations such as Rock Against Racism and the anti-gang crime body Hold It Down support a number of events, including a double bill of plays developed by youth groups. Pyke is well aware of the potential, and the importance, of utilising the arts as a public forum.

"I think you'd be very impertinent to put on a festival like this if you didn't address certain issues that are happening in Hackney; on the trendy media level, yes, it's all fantastic, but there is still an underbelly where there's lots of crime and poverty."

7-22 July, (020-8985 2424) www.spicefestival.com