Completed first research memo for Lydia’s documentary concept. She wants to map Eastern European diaspora in London physically. Where we live, work, gather, feel home.
Brick Lane Russian shops selling familiar groceries. Gloucester Road Ukrainian cafés. South Kensington Polish bookstores. These spaces function as cultural anchors. You hear your language, eat recognizable food, browse books in Cyrillic. Small islands of familiarity in London’s overwhelming scale.
Writing it forced me to articulate spaces I navigate unconsciously. My daily geography as ethnographic data. The nail salon where I work becomes research site. Russian hair salon I visit monthly. Ukrainian church I pass but never enter. All these locations map displacement practically and emotionally.
Lydia wants this for documentary location scouting. But creating the memo clarified something about my novels too. Characters move through London but rarely feel rooted there. They inhabit transitional spaces. Airports, hotels, nail salons, shopping centres. Places designed for temporary presence not permanent belonging.
The research memo catalogues twenty locations across London. Each with notes about who gathers there, what languages dominate, what kind of belonging it offers. Grocery stores provide different connection than churches. Restaurants different from bookstores.
Interesting to systematize what I usually process intuitively. Documentary requires different thinking than fiction. More concrete, more mappable, more focused on observable behaviour than internal states.
She’s using this memo for funding applications. Documentary project becoming more real.
— Writer Julia Zolotova
