How can participatory arts, creative technologies and location-based experiences give voice to the diversity of community experiences around Queen Elizabeth Olympic Park, and surface new insights that meaningfully inform decision-making about how the site develops?

We Make the Park aims to render visible the diversity and significance of community organising located around Queen Elizabeth Olympic Park. From Women’s groups to youth centres to allotments to creative hubs, community groups are a central aspect of local residents’ sense of belonging, and yet they remain invisible, often known only to their users. Our project intends to put community organising on the map and make them a celebrated feature of the cultural life of East London.

Working with a range of LLDC’s Community Anchor Network groups, participants are learning how to 3D scan objects that have significance for each organisation and their relation to community and belonging. Participants will also be interviewed and a series of digital object portraits will be produced that will be located around the Olympic Park, and mapped onto the local area. The project centres skills sharing and the exchange of local knowledge, using a process that enables participants to be creative, and have authorship and agency of their own stories.

The project team comprises Pete Gardom, director of creative storytelling studio This Great Adventure; Annie Davey, UCL MA Art Education, Culture and Practice course leader; Mario Minchelli, artist and professor of creative arts at Loughborough University, and; Melanie Wheeler, an artist, community arts worker and UCL alumni.