Memory Work exhibition

Connecting researchers and practitioners from across UCL, the new 'Memory Work' exhibition explores the theme of memory in urban research, and how creative outputs might provide more engaging entry-points for understanding the complex evidence that arises from urban investigations. 

The showcase will feature a range of work from members of the UCL Urban Laboratory Steering Committee, including featured work from Director of the School for the Creative and Cultural Industries, Haidy Geismar and co-lead of our MA Public History, Anna Maguire. 

Haidy is currently chair of Te Maru o Hinemini, a UK CIC working to conserve the carvings of Hinemihi, an historic Māori meeting house in the National Trust's Clandon Park. The National Trust has agreed in principle to return the carvings to their descendants in New Zealand in exchange for a new Māori-carved meeting house. A poem and series of woven panels, which reflect on Hinemihi’s legacy and future, will be shown at the 'Memory Work' exhibition.

SCCI resident historian and co-lead of our MA Public History Anna Maguire will also be showcasing oral history projects from our Memory Workshop, a collecting and digitisation project within the Urban Room that is open for community co-production and collaboration. The three projects on show are concerned with space and place-making, memories of East London in different communities, and the changing urban environment.

The materials on display span across disciplines and geographies and reveal a multidisciplinary approach to Memory in urban research, the Urban Laboratory's current theme for 2022-2024. Contributions have come from people working in the fields of urbanism, architecture, geography, political science, planning, critical heritage studies, history and anthropology. 

The UCL Urban Room is a multi-purpose research, teaching and exhibition space at UCL East, dedicated to debate and engagement on urbanism and the impact of industry, globalisation, regeneration and gentrification. The new 'Memory Work' exhibition explores key questions about the past and future of urban living through a Memory lens, and presents different creative approaches to engaging research.

Featuring work by: Andrew Harris, Anna Maguire, Ava Fatah gen Schieck, Catalina Ortiz, Clare Melhuish, Haidy Geismar, James O'Leary, Kalliopi Fouseki, Nishat Awan, Njogu Morgan and Pablo Sendra. 

Plan your visit

The exhibition runs from 5 July 2024 - 16 August 2024.

Visit Monday - Saturday, 10am - 6pm, no need to book.

Tickets are required for the following special events:

• Stadklang - Unconscious Music: Listening to the Background Sound of Motown

  18th July. 6.30 - 8.30pm
  Stadtklang is UCL Urban Laboratory's music night and weekend evening get-together exploring urban sound, hosted in collaboration with Department of Visual Cultures at Goldsmiths, University of London. Led by Rachel Finney and Louis Moreno. 
  
  Book your free ticket

• 'Living archives': a trans-local conversation

  2nd August, 3pm - 5pm
  Join us for an engaging discussion with the collaborators of three Living Archives projects in Colombia, Mexico and UK. This event will be an opportunity to discuss issues around the framing and conceptualisation of the projects, the methodological strategies for learning together, and the mechanisms of activation and creation enabled in the engagement processes with community and academic partners.
  
  Initiated by exhibitor and Urban Laboratory Director Catalina Ortiz, this is a bilingual, hybrid event, taking place across different time zones (BST: 10am-12, CMDX: 9am). A zoom link will be provided for those attending online closer to the date.
  
  Book your free ticket

About the curators

Kara Blackmore

Dr Kara Blackmore is a curator and researcher who works at the intersections of arts, heritage, and social repair. Her practice is informed by long-term collaborations in areas affected by conflict and migration. Kara is the Curator of the UCL Urban Room where she supports experiential teaching, leads exhibition-based research, and fosters community dialogue.

She is also the Principal Investigator of the AHRC funded Art Allies project at the Firoz Lalji Institute for Africa. For this research, Kara works with colleagues in South Sudan and Colombia to investigate how artists and allied activists stay safe in regions impacted by prolonged violence.

Clare Melhuish

Clare Melhuish is Professorial Research Fellow in Anthropology of Built Environments, and was Director of UCL Urban Laboratory from 2018 – 2024, leading its transition to departmental status in the Faculty of the Built Environment in 2021. She researches processes and socio-cultural impacts of large-scale urban-regional development, with a particular focus on the role of heritage as an instrument of development in the context of the climate crisis.

Clare has led on a number of cross-disciplinary urban heritage research programmes and activities within Urban Lab, focusing on postcolonial and decolonial urban contexts, and as co-lead of the Curating the City research cluster in the UCL Centre for Critical Heritage. She is co-editor of Co-Curating the City: universities and urban heritage past and future (eds Melhuish, Benesch, Martins-Holmberg and Sully, UCL Press 2022), and author of ‘Heritage in Urban Development: Materialising Claims to Urban Space in Doha and Kingston’, in Critical Approaches to Heritage for Development (eds Cross and Giblin, Routledge 2023).

About the UCL Urban Room

Located at One Pool Street, the public-facing UCL Urban Room hosts events, exhibitions, workshops and engagement with local stakeholders, professional audiences, and the wider public. Exploring future living and urbanism in the four Olympic Park boroughs, the UCL Urban Room is a partnership between UCL Urban Laboratory, The Bartlett, School for the Creative and Cultural Industries and UCL Library Services: Special Collections.

For more information email urbanroom@ucl.ac.uk.