Three Beacon Bursaries awarded to east London projects

UCL Culture has announced the awardees in the latest round of Beacon Bursary public engagement funding. 

Of the 11 projects funded in this round, three involve communities and local organisations in east London.

The Beacon Bursary funding scheme supports UCL’s Public Engagement Strategy which aims to embed public engagement as a normal, valued activity for UCL staff and students.

The three east London projects are:

Maryam Bandukda – UCL Interaction Centre: Co-creating artful representations of blind people’s experience at the Queen Elizabeth Olympic Park

Maryam will develop her approach to co-creation and relationships with a literature review before recruiting blind and partially-sighted members of the community to share their experiences.  

The team will host a workshop to co-design a piece of art representing the participants' experience that will be further developed by an artist from the community and exhibited at the Queen Elizabeth Olympic Park. 

Maryam Bandukda is a postgraduate research student in the UCL Interaction Centre.   

Emily Patterson and Jo Guile – Institute of Ophthalmology and the Slade School of Fine Art: Red, Green, Blue, East

Emily and Jo have co-designed a series of workshops with Into Focus, an East London charity-funded organisation specialising in photography. They will be running these workshops, which explore the science, art, and experience of colour within Tower Hamlets.

The project has developed through a collaboration that was formed during UCL's Trellis programme and will culminate with a public art exhibition.

Dr Emily Patterson is a Research Fellow at the Institute of Ophthalmology and Jo Guile is an Artist and Technician at the Slade School of Fine Art.

Alexandra Albert – Department of Geography: Bringing Tower Hamlets Asset Mapping to Life

Alexandra will support the development of an interactive, online community map resource for parents of children under 5 years old in the London Borough of Tower Hamlets.

She will collaborate in running a series of workshops with the target public group to bring the map to life and ensure the map can be maintained and updated, and that it is a useful resource for families in the borough.

Dr Alexandra Albert is a Research Fellow on ActEarly UK Preventative Research Partnership, in the Extreme Citizen Science Research Group (ExCiteS) in the Department of Geography.