Just Imaginaries Exhibition & Memory Workshops | UCL Urban Room

About the exhibition 

Just Imaginaries is the anchor exhibition in the UCL Urban Room from 19 Nov 2025 to 14 Feb 2026. Looking back to look forward, it reflects on 20 years of interdisciplinary research at UCL Urban Laboratory, whose work shapes and inspires much of the Urban Room’s public programming. The show invites visitors to engage with archival materials, recordings and digitised collections, using shared memory to imagine more just urban futures. 

Why look back to look forward? The exhibition connects archives, voices and research across generations and geographies. By surfacing multiple memory practices, it asks how we can build a shared language for more equitable urban futures. 

Throughout the exhibition, the space will be activated through a series of events called ‘Memory Workshops’. Memory Workshops draw on lab-based learning methods such as listening sessions, studio recordings, participatory archiving, skills-based demos.  

Memory workshops include: 

• The Urban Listening Room: A Sound System Session with Charlie Dark (26 November 2025, 18:00 – 20:30) - An immersive sound system session revealing the hidden stories and connections that power it.
• Full Studio Podcasting – Live conversation and skills session (15 January 2026, 16:00 – 18:00) - A live podcast conversation reflecting on 20 years of the Urban Laboratory and the role of research in forging just imaginaries. A how-to meets an insightful discussion.

For more information, view the ‘Memory Workshops’ section below. 

Exhibition visiting information 

The Just Imaginaries Exhibition is open Monday to Saturday, 10:00-16:00, and closed for teaching on Wednesdays from 11:00-13:00.  

All visitors are welcome to the exhibition and tickets are not required. However, booking is essential for the Memory Workshop sessions listed below.

Join the Memory Workshops 

The Urban Listening Room: A Sound System Session with Charlie Dark

Join Charlie Dark MBE and DIVINE KIND for an immersive vinyl listening session revealing the hidden stories and connections that power a sound system.

The Urban Listening Room transforms the UCL Urban Room into a living archive of sound and memory, as Charlie Dark MBE and DIVINE KIND (Dana Sousa-Limbu) guide a deep-listening journey through soul, dub, jazz and ambient London rhythms via the Run Dem Sound system. Participants are invited to move, listen, and optionally record short reflections responding to “What sounds or stories keep your system alive?” These contributions form a collective soundscape that will be digitised and pressed as a one-off vinyl dubplate. Developed with the Bartlett Pan-African Indigenist Collective, the session draws on African diasporic traditions of DIY culture and collective making, exploring what happens when a sound system (an architecture of gathering, care and joy) enters the university and reshapes how we listen, learn and make space together. 

Book now via Eventbrite

Full Studio Podcasting – Live conversation and skills session  

Podcasting is an important medium for storytelling. It is used for telling oral histories, engaging the past and for redressing historical injustices. Creatives and academics use podcasts to produce conversations and archive the voices of those not normally present in the official record.  

This session will be run by Spencer Samuel, a Media Production Technical Manager working in UCL’s Information Service Design, who incorporates his rich industry experience into his teaching, aiming to share commercial knowledge to bridge the gap between theory and practice in education,bring a full studio podcasting suite into the UCL Urban Room to show students, academics, and creative collaborators how to use the medium as a tool for workshopping histories.  

As an open session, we invite participants at entry skill levels and who are interested in historical, heritage and urban issues that relate to social-cultural storytelling.  

Book now via Eventbrite

Radical Types: Grassroots Publishing in East London 

Join us for the launch of the latest issue of Urban Pamphleteer titled ‘Radical Types: Grassroots Publishing in East London.’ This issue looks at the presence and power of independent, community-oriented, and radical publishing in East London. 

In keeping with the traditions of radical pamphleteering, Urban Pamphleteer confronts key contemporary urban questions from diverse perspectives. It aims to stimulate debate and empower citizens, practitioners, and policymakers to shape change positively. Produced by the UCL Urban Laboratory in collaboration with Central Saint Martins’ Graphic Communication Design, the series is edited by founders Ben Campkin and Rebecca Ross, designed by Guglielmo Rossi, and features a range of guest editors. 

The new issue, Radical Types, explores how grassroots presses, zines, and community printmakers have shaped public culture and creative resistance in the region, from long-standing print workshops to emerging artist collectives. At a time when new cultural institutions and digital platforms are transforming the city’s media landscape, the issue draws attention to the ongoing importance of print as a social, political, and aesthetic force. 

The launch brings together editors Leah Lovett, Rebecca Ross, and Ben Campkin into conversation with contributors and local practitioners. Together they will reflect on how grassroots publishing documents urban change, fosters solidarity, and continues to imagine more equitable creative futures for the city. 

Booking link coming soon.

About the UCL Urban Room 

Located in Stratford, UCL East, the UCL Urban Room is a space for events, exhibitions, workshops and engagement with students, researchers, artists and community members. Based on the idea of an ‘urban room’ as a forum for community-based debate and dialogue, the UCL Urban Room brings together academic research and the lived experiences of city residents to inspire meaningful education for our students and visitors. Users of the Urban Room are invited to join a dynamic network of practice focused on issues of global urbanism, heritage, arts and social history. The space is equipped with oral history recording and archiving capabilities through its Memory Workshop initiative. Together, the Urban Room and Memory Workshop are supported by The Bartlett Faculty of Built Environment and the School for Creative and Cultural Industries at UCL.