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We were delighted to award funding to seven collaborative engagement projects in 2024-2025.
The Community Engagement Seed Fund is a small grants scheme designed to support the development of engagement activities and partnership opportunities with east London communities.
We are delighted to announce the seven successful grants in the 2024-2025 round of funding. Read more about their projects below.
- Roxanne Crosby-Nwaobi: Institute of Ophthalmology.
Promoting eye health and research in underserved communities. This project will see Professor Crosby-Nwaobi work in partnership with Christ Apostolic Church (East District) led by Reverend James Olanipenkun. They will respond to the identified need for education around eye health. Together they will deliver two workshops to members of the church’s community, will co-design with them educational materials and then together will deliver this material at a health promotion workshop at church.
This will feed into wider work to understand the attitudes, values and beliefs of local community member around health research and data sharing, and which will see the establishment of a steering committee to influence the patient and public involvement work of the department..- Pip Laurenson: History of Art / School for Creative and Cultural industries
Community Connections, sharing skills for preserving film in community. Staff from the School for Creative and Cultural Industries at UCL East will be collaborating with not/nowhere, a Black and POC run artist worker co-op, to run a series of skills-sharing workshops and opportunities focussed on analogue film. The skills, materials and technologies that enable artists to be able to work in celluloid film are rapidly diminishing. East London is home to many of those engaged in artists’ film from archivists to people who fix or loan equipment, and artists. The workshops will bring together different communities working in east London to support artists who work with film. It will also provide key learning experiences for students undertaking the MSc in conservation of Contemporary Art and Media who will see demonstrations of rare machines and what images they can produce. The aim of the project is to make connections, surface shared problems and build future areas of collaboration and support.
- Lo Marshall: Bartlett School of Architecture.
Queer Community College - Education Network. This project seeks to build on the successful pilot of the Queer Community College delivered in partnership with QUEERCIRCLE, which sought to deliver and free and accessible programme to introduce adult learners to key concepts from queer theory within a dedicated queer community space. Funding from the community engagement seed fund will allow the project team to develop the Queer Community College Education Network, a steering group and support network to further this work, and look to ways to deliver the programme year on year. They will deliver three workshops to deepen existing relationships, facilitate closer collaboration and imagining what a truly accessible, community-led Queer Community College might look like.
- Athina Petsou: Institute for Environmental Design and Engineering.
Unpacking hidden social meanings in historic buildings in Barking and Dagenham. This project works with the Barking and Dagenham community, an area that is both a priority for Greater London Authority due to its high level of deprivation and its proximity to UCL. This project aims to connect UCL, more deeply with this community through creative theatre initiatives that bring untold local stories to life. This project is in partnership with a range of local organisations and community groups, Athina Petsou in collaboration with Professor Kalliopi Fouseki will lead a series of workshops which will included exploring museum archives, developing stories, writing scripts and rehearsing their final script and performance. Using creative storytelling and Devised theatre, the project will encourage community participation and celebrate local heritage.
- David Storring: Bartlett School of Architecture
Clay, Culture, Carbon + Collaboration. This project is a creative collaboration between east London architecture studio Morris + company, local secondary schools in Hackney and UCL experts. It engages with sixth form students in hands-on workshops focused on clay as a sustainable building material. This will teach students about architecture, environmental design and the impact of construction on the planet. Students will take an active role in shaping the sessions sharing idea and helping, decide the outcomes. Over two months, students will explore topics like carbon emissions, circular design and eco-friendly constructionand will create their own clay tiles using different methods. They will also host a public exhibition for students to showcase their work.
- Laverne Caprice: Anthropology
Giving birth to the next generation of film exhibitors. This project will offer three black PhD students at UCL a seven-week, hands on introduction to film exhibition and curation, in collaboration with Priscilla Igwe, CEO of east London organisation, The New Black Film Collective. Each student will be supported to curate a unique short non-fiction film programme to celebrate underrepresented talent in east London. They will aim to connect students with key local events like The Newham Film Festival while developing their own screenings to showcase in UCL East’s One Pool Street cinema alongside a Q&A session to give the student curators an opportunity to discuss their choices and engage with the audience.
- Conor Tweed - Institute of Clinical Trials and Methodology
Developing an advisory group of people affected by Tuberculosis. This project aims to build a group for people in east London with lived experience of Tuberculosis (TB) to work alongside UCL researcher on TB as part of the UCL-TB project. This group will strengthen UCL’s research into TB and make it more impactful and relevant to communities in east London, where rates of TB remain high. Members of the group will be able to share their experience with TB and their motivation behind joining the group through a networking event brining together UCL researchers and people from east London with lived experience with TB.
Visit the Community Engagement Seed Fund webpage for more information about the latest round of funding.
Email the community engagement team for more information.