UCL Urban Room

A practice-based, multi-purpose space at the heart of the new UCL East campus, dedicated to debate and engagement around key questions of future living and urbanism.

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 the impact of industry, globalisation, regeneration and gentrification on the six Olympic Park boroughs and their people, 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.

The space is designed to create opportunities for academics, students and partners to be exposed to each other's work and initiatives. It operates as a research-led teaching resource for two associated Masters programmes, Urban Lab's Global Urbanism MASc, and Public History MA (UCL History Department), as well as a space for engagement and participation by the wider academic community.

What's on

Sonia E. Barrett: Maplective public exhibition

15 March 2024 - 15 June 2024, 10am - 6pm

In the Maplective exhibition, artist Sonia E. Barrett takes European tools, instrumental in creating colonial power, and reconfigures them to do the cultural work they disrupted. Colonial Maps, Desks and Cameras are reimagined to make tools that draw on pre-colonial cultural instruments.

Through making, discussion and performance, Sonia invites us to respond to three sculptural works, to co-create a new sculpture that reframes the question, ‘What was here before?’

The exhibition is a starting point for a further residency that reflects on using sculpture to do meaningful cultural work.

Find out more

Work with us

Volunteer opportunities with UCL Urban Room

If you are a UCL student interested in the arts, community engagement and urban research, consider working with the Urban Room as a volunteer.

3 people sitting on cushions laughing and talking in exhibition space with books, screens and audio equipment

Open call for volunteers

Passionate about urban research, art exhibitions, and community engagement and want to make an impact? Gain hands-on experience with assisting exhibitions, event planning, and social media management as a student volunteer!

If this interests you get in touch by emailing urbanroom@ucl.ac.uk. There isn’t a deadline for applications as the team will review them on a rolling basis.

Download the Volunteer Open Call flyer to find out more.

Meet the curator

UCL Urban Room is curated by Dr Kara Blackmore, an anthropologist and curator who specialises in community-driven exhibition making, and has an established track record in developing innovative collaborations between educational institutions, government agencies, NGOs, and cultural organisations. She brings an ethics of care to her work that is inspired by decolonial methodologies and looks forward to inspiring students, staff and partners to experiment in the new space.

Past exhibitions

In Practice: Student Showcase

06/09/2023 - 28/10/2023

This showcase brings together student work from three postgraduate programmes: Public History, Global Urbanism, and Connected Enviornments. The range of presentations demonstrates their approaches to understanding today's social challenges relating to memory, identity, urban change, and technology.

All three programmes are located in the new UCL East and engage with the context of the area through site-based learning, and collaborations with local oraganisations and communities.

SEEDED residency showcase

01/08/2023 - 19/08/2023

The SEEDED showcase brings together work created during and as a product of residencies as part of East Bank in London College of Fashion and UCL East Urban Room. The four artists have been embedded for five months to allow them to investigate and develop their practice on themes around social practise, activism, collective memory, urbanisation and community engagement.

Audiences can expect to explore ideas of antifascist protest in east London with Mercedes Baptiste Halliday; unethical pay in the east London fashion industry from Toyin Gbomedo; sustainable styling in Easten Eurpean fashion with Noemi Gunea; and Somali identity and poetry with Naajia Ahmed.

Testing Ground: an immersive sound and video exhibition

31/05/2023 - 21/06/2023

An exhibition of visual and sonic installations of contemporary and historic helicopter surveillance over London, Iraq and Belfast. It shows techniques of aerial surveillance that were developed by the British Army over Belfast during the 30 year conflict - the so-called Troubles – these have now been adapted by the National Police Air Service for use over London and other UK mainland cities. This exhibition, derived from a project conceived by Henrietta Williams and Merijn Royaards, interweaves archival material gathered from the Imperial War Museum’s Northern Ireland Collection against contemporaneous video footage and sonic field recordings of helicopter surveillance at moments of protest in London.

Navigating the System: A Boater Healthcare Exhibition

24/03/2023 – 29/04/2023

Navigating the System is a co-curated exhibition about London’s boater community and difficulties they face accessing healthcare, told through photographs by photojournalist Caitlin Vinicombe and testimonial accounts documented in research by Joseph Cook and Nura Ali.

Read the Q&A with Joseph Cook and Nura Ali

SE1 Stories: Community action in a London neighbourhood

19/01/2023 – 03/03/2023

SE1 Stories is a public history exhibition tracing four decades of community action, starting in Blackfriars in the 1970s. The exhibition has been created from a collection of thousands of photographs, and archives including the SE1 Newspaper publication that was produced from 1975-1991