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Supporting Newham to develop new community heritage centre

26 July 2024

UCL Special Collections and the School for the Creative and Cultural Industries (SCCI) at UCL East are working with the London Borough of Newham to transform Canning Town Old Library into a valuable community asset. 

UCL Marshgate next to the ArcelorMittal Orbit London tower.

The Outreach Team in UCL Special Collections will support the project by delivering public consultation through The New Curators Project, training and supporting a new volunteer cohort, and helping to devise work placements. 

UCL Special Collections have been collaborating with the London Borough of Newham since 2017 through The New Curators Project - a flagship community project for young east Londoners looking to work in the cultural heritage sector – alongside delivering activities for Newham Heritage Month, and exhibition development. They will continue to act as a critical friend as Newham expand their team and services. 

Vicky Price, Head of Outreach in UCL Special Collections, said:

“UCL Special Collections’ relationship with Newham has long been vital to our community programming, but this thrilling development is a real opportunity for us to assist Newham in areas where we have expertise, to learn from our partner and to be a part of a hugely valuable community resource.”

Funding and support

SCCI have pledged £10,000 funding and £5,000 worth of staff time, support and equipment to empower Newham’s plans, including the use of their Memory Bike and Workshop which enables the digital documentation and archiving of oral histories and everyday soundscapes.  

Researchers will use these facilities to co-produce community sessions, from story collection to playing defunct media, with the aim of showcasing and celebrating the existing wealth of community-produced resources in the area and developing these further. 

Newham have secured £551,743 from The National Lottery Heritage Fund and £204,870 of Public Sector Decarbonisation Funding. 

Next phase

The next phase of the project will include working with residents and community groups to curate the centre’s programme, as well as finally beginning the process of conserving, cataloguing, digitising and relocating the borough’s archive collection. These will be stored in a state-of-the-art, purpose-built archive and showcased, along with the borough’s museum collections, in the transformed library building.  

Read the full article on the SCCI webpages