Voices of East Bank

I developed and led a project created by LLDC for Queen Elizabeth Olympic Park in Stratford to address a need to capture the diverse migration histories and languages of Newham, Hackney, Tower Hamlets and Waltham Forest.

Client
London Legacy Development Corporation

Timeline
1 year

Role
Project Lead

Date Completed
May 2024

Approach

I was brought into LLDC to deliver the Voices of East Bank project. With the development of Queen Elizabeth Olympic Park, huge organisations including the V&A Museum, Sadlers’ Wells, the London College of Fashion and BBC are moving to a new East Bank site inside the park. LLDC designed the Voices of East Bank Project to capture the histories of communities that have lived in and shaped East London’s culture and community for decades.

What was special about this project?

I was given the freedom by project sponsor, Ruth Lin Wong Holmes, to introduce collaborative practices in heritage projects to the corporation by recruiting and training Oral History Community Researchers. It’s wonderful that such a large corporation has taken the time to create a heritage project with a goal to capture the everyday stories of community members across East London and remember the migration heritage that spans centuries.

The project at a glance

  • I built partnerships with several community organisations being Community Researchers, including Deep Boroughs, Newham Community Project, Roma Support Group, Swadhinata Trust and many more. Trust and relationships were at the core of my work.
  • Over 80 histories were captured by Community Researchers that reflected a real diversity of experiences, inspired by the comprehensive training and inspiration delivered by Dr Anna Maguire at UCL, and artists The Cockney Sikh and Curly Wordy.
  • A collaboration with Deafroots explored accessible ways of doing history projects, working with Rubbena Aurangzeb Tariq and Bim Ajadi to make a beautiful film.
  • Histories are now permanently stored at Newham Archive for public access, as well as on a website.
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