Creative Experience Lab launches new projects

CELL is a collaborative programme led by UCL and Loughborough University London to establish Queen Elizabeth Olympic Park as a leading base for innovation in the experience economy.

The projects were selected in response to a London Legacy Development Corporation (LLDC) challenge to strengthen belonging at Queen Elizabeth Olympic Park by foregrounding community authorship, inclusive engagement and creative technologies.

Roll Deep

Roll Deep is a community‑led roller‑skating project reframing skating as a cultural practice. Skaters work with artists and technologists using full‑body motion capture plus voice to co‑create short motion‑capture films for social media, contributing to positive and inclusive narratives of skating on the park.

Team:

• Ben White (UCL, Academic Lead),
• James Kaguima (Skate Cabal),
• Ebanja (CommonGround Architecture & Design/ Elevate Board),
• Alexander Whitley (AWDC),
• Cephas Bhaskar (UCL BodyLab).

We Make The Park & The Park Makes Us

This is a participatory arts project inviting local residents to create ‘sonic portraits’ about belonging, using photography, film, voice and 3D scanning. The team will record participants and produce multimodal prototype artworks (2D, 3D, AR/VR) and a community showcase.

Team:

• Annie Davey (UCL, Academic Lead),
• Pete Gardom (This Great Adventure),
• Mario Minichiello (Loughborough University London).

About the QEOP Creative Experience Lab

The programme is a collaboration between LLDC and Creative Experience Lab London exploring how new forms of creative experience and cutting-edge technology can respond to live priorities at Queen Elizabeth Olympic Park. The ambition is to move beyond conventional engagement or one-off cultural activity, and test how immersive, interactive and community-authored experiences could change how people navigate, use and feel ownership of the Park.

Creative Experience Lab London is led by UCL and Loughborough London, with partners LLDC, Here East, V&A, Sadlers Wells, UAL and multiple creative, community, technology and educational organisations in and around the park. It aims to establish a leading base in creative experience innovation building on the unique creative, cultural, business and community ecosystem at QEOP.  

Working with LLDC, these two latest projects form part of a wider effort to improve Queen Elizabeth Olympic Park for local people through partnerships and cross‑sector community collaborations.

Congratulations to the teams involved, and we look forward to sharing the outcomes of these initiatives in coming months.