I don’t know about the places you mentioned but have experience three places in east London that may be of interest to you.
There is a place in East London called Four Corners. They have professional darkroom facilities and run short courses. They had a colour printing course that ran recently. It was around £175 for the weekend.
You have to keep checking their site for the courses. They run colour and black and white courses every once in a while. I’ve been for an induction but didn’t sign up. To hire their darkrooms, you have to pay £50 membership and then B&W is £25 for 4 hours and Colour is £30 for 4 hours.
I’ve done a course there, not photography, as they run Video/Film courses there as well. They have excellent facilities but the darkroom wasn’t for me.
http://www.fourcornersfilm.co.uk/I did a basic darkroom course at Shadwell centre. If you live or travelling through Tower Hamlets then pop in to the library or idea store and pick up a short course guide and the details are in there. You don’t have to be a resident of tower hamlets to enrol.
Here is their site. It’s called learning ladder.
http://learningladder.co.uk/The course runs twice a year and is running now so the details have been removed from the site as the enrolment is now closed. It cost around £65 for a ten week course,2 hours a week Tuesday evenings.
I did some printing a long time ago and wanted to do a refresher course. This course starts from the very basics and some weeks it was just theory some weeks and we never printed anything. I found it a little boring at times although I did know much of what was covered. There were more people enrolled then they had working enlargers.
I would recommend Photochats. They are in Hackney. I found them after doing the course with Tower Hamlets as they don’t hire their darkrooms.
To hire the darkroom at Photochats ( B&W) it cost £4 per hour or £3 if 12 hours are paid for upfront. There is a Black and White printing course, one day long, on the 3rd of July. Which cost £75.
It’s run by Peter. He is always at hand. It’s a local (for me at least) independent place and I like to support places like these.
http://www.chatspalace.co.uk/hire/Here are his details 0208 986 9283 / 07921816754 or email peteryoung83@yahoo.co.uk
If you sign up then tell he abdul sent you. I won’t get a discount, it’s just good to keep a track of who people find him.
