East Bank: a new cultural identity marked one of NLA’s last events as part of the Queen Elizabeth Olympic Park Programme and residency at Westfield Stratford City over the summer. The programme responded to the ten-year anniversary of the London 2012 Olympics and Paralympic Games to reflect on a decade of development and legacy and looked ahead at East London’s wider regeneration over the next ten years. 

 

East Bank plays an important role in East London’s future regeneration and will significantly shape the next chapter of its legacy. A series of new landmark cultural institutions are being built along Stratford’s waterfront that includes BBC Music, Sadler’s Wells, UAL’s London College of Fashion and V&A East. The masterplan has and will engage with existing local creative talent over the next decade, marking an extraordinary new direction for London’s new cultural destination which celebrates the best of East London’s arts and culture.

 

The Stratford Waterfront is one of three sites that make up East Bank which encompasses UCL East, Here East and the Stratford Waterfront. Across the three sites, a museum, university campuses, a research centre, a music hall, a theatre and multiple creative hubs merge science, tech and innovation with arts and culture, providing a new collaborative cultural destination. Alex Wraight, Partner at Allies and Morrison described the Waterfront masterplan as a design collaboration from process to product, the design process itself was a partnership between Allies and Morrison, O’Donnell + Tuomey, Camps Felip Arquitecturia, LDA Design, Buro Happold and Gardiner & Theobald. The real partnership will of course be measured by the people who inhabit and use the buildings once they are complete however, the design process has been cross-disciplinary and deeply ingrained within the existing cultural ecosystem of the site. An impressive 10,100 sqm has been designed for public realm use across the masterplan that connects to the open ground floors of the buildings, creating a seamless link between the park and the waterfront, prioritizing public access. The design was a result of multiple participatory and public consultations with local communities to create a series of buildings that responded to the needs of the local residents. ‘The public realm is colonised by nature and people and is charged by the cultural uses of the building’ says Alex. This didn’t come without its challenges however, most of the buildings have four or more storeys, each requiring specific technical detailing to incorporate different uses. The BBC Music building, in particular, had to incorporate 16 acoustically isolated spaces to allow recording studios, control rooms and music practising rooms to function simultaneously. How the institutions will interact with each other and respond to their surrounding landscape will be the next stage of the masterplan, but the design methodologies and processes used should deliver a site that is equally collaborative. 

 

Maia Ardalla, Producer: Schools and Young People at V&A East, discussed the museum’s new engagement programme, which champions creativity for the 21st century via two specific theoretical values that closely draw on East London’s identity. The transhistorical perspective focuses on a thematic and contemporary lens of the V&A collection and wider global creative practices, and the transcultural supports a creative programme that is diverse, plural and people-centric. These new curatorial methodologies allow a decolonising reading of cultural collections that, in turn, grant a new canon to be born. This can disseminate into the education and creative branches of the museum, which has a direct impact on its visitors and local residents. Drawing from the existing lived experiences of the residents and direct audience consultation, the programme can move away from old museology and create new perspectives on museum access, learning and public uses.

 

V&A East are working closely with the GLA in producing a long-term cultural strategy that puts public access at the fore. The GLA have an important role in the development of these institutions. Nurturing these partnerships and making sure these institutions are interacting and supporting each other is crucial to their long-term relationship, says Joseph Henry, Capital Development Manager in the Culture and Creative Industries Unit at GLA. However, the cultural richness and job opportunities created need to be felt across a wider reach that goes beyond the two-mile radius of East Bank. 

 

Dave Hill, founder and editor, On London, highlighted the need for another cultural centre that is accessible to East London, compared to the current cultural district condensed across “Albertopolis”, exhibition road and South Kensington, and one that can mirror and celebrate its local cultural scene. 

 

From an LLDC perspective, Vivian Murinde, Head of Inclusive Growth and Skills, discussed how these institutions have created a crucial opportunity to diversify their workforce, and through training programmes and engagement with local talent, jobs have already been created even before the sites are complete, opening invaluable career trajectories in the arts and culture sectors.   

 

We look forward to following these institutions and their impact on East London's regeneration over the next three years.