• East Bank launches its first creative programme of free cultural events, taking place across Queen Elizabeth Olympic Park and beyond, 23 July – 25 September 2022.

• Programme highlights include the biggest ever Great Get Together on 23 July, a series of public art interventions commissioned in collaboration with gal-dem launching on 27 August, new art commissions for each of the four Olympic boroughs, and a finale performance choreographed by Dannielle ‘Rhimes’ Lecointe on 22 September.
• Timed to mark the 10th anniversary of the London 2012 Olympic and Paralympic Games, the programme will celebrate the forthcoming site launches of the five East Bank partners on Queen Elizabeth Olympic Park. 

East Bank is delighted to announce its first creative programme, a series of free cultural events running 23 July – 25 September 2022 in Queen Elizabeth Olympic Park and neighbouring venues across the four Olympic boroughs – Newham, Hackney, Tower Hamlets and Waltham Forest. Bringing together new art commissions, live performances, talks and tours, and a series of community workshops, the programme is supported by the Mayor of London, Foundation for Future London, the City of London, London Legacy Development Corporation, and the councils of Newham, Hackney, Tower Hamlets and Waltham Forest. Marking 10 years since the London 2012 Olympic and Paralympic Games, the programme will celebrate the continued legacy of the Games in east London and provide a taste of what’s to come at East Bank. 

East Bank is a unique collaboration between world-leading universities, and arts and culture institutions on Queen Elizabeth Olympic Park. A new hub for innovation, creativity and learning, East Bank opens up opportunities for everyone who visits, lives and works in east London. East Bank’s first collaborative creative programme anticipates the forthcoming site openings of each of the East Bank partners: UCL (University College London), UAL’s London College of Fashion, BBC, Sadler’s Wells, and V&A East Storehouse (2024) and V&A East Museum (2025). The programme’s grand finale on 22 September 2022 will help mark the opening of the first building on UCL’s new campus on the Park. 

Established to harness the Olympic legacy and create a new cultural destination in east London, East Bank is deeply rooted in local communities and local landscapes. This diverse programme of events will showcase East Bank’s particular ability to combine creative practice, world-class research and community collaboration. Working with young people from across the creative industries and beyond, the programme will demonstrate East Bank’s commitment to nurturing future talent and supporting young creatives to explore ideas and take risks. Taking advantage of a period of transition on Queen Elizabeth Olympic Park, East Bank will create a blueprint for new ways of nurturing local talent, and promoting socially engaged and ambitious creative practice. 

To kick off its creative programme, East Bank is partnering with The Great Get Together on Saturday 23 July 2022. East Bank partners will host a series of live events, activities, performances and workshops as part of The Great Get Together’s biggest ever annual programme of music, dance, arts, sport and food across Queen Elizabeth Olympic Park. 

Launching on 27 August 2022, East Bank is collaborating with London-based editorial and curatorial platform gal-dem on a major new series of public art interventions. gal-dem works with young people of colour from marginalised genders and has commissioned four artists to explore the ways in which our daily lives have been changed by the pandemic. Erin Aniker, Hannah Ceren, Kirsty Kerr and Cherelle Sappleton will contribute to a series of public realm artworks jointly named ‘Getting Back to Normal – Utopia/Dystopia’ and curated by Leyla Reynolds, founding member of gal-dem. The works will appear in and around Queen Elizabeth Olympic Park as digital screens, large-scale easels, printed hoardings, installations and more. 

East Bank has also co-commissioned a new creative project with each of the Olympic Boroughs, running throughout August and September. Firstly in Waltham Forest, East Bank is collaborating with Digital Leap, a week-long intensive workshop running 8 – 12 August 2022 that will combine computing and choreography to inspire female-identifying young people into digital careers. Launching in a community space in Tower Hamlets at the end of August, artist and fashion designer Rahemur Rahman will work with six young people from his home borough to create a new public realm artwork from salvaged materials. For Hackney Carnival on 11 September 2022, East Bank has commissioned Hackney’s only East Asian carnival troupe, Jun Mo Generation, to collaborate with young people on the creation of a parade dragon. Finally, Newham Unlocked Festival will transform West Ham Park on Saturday 17 September. East Bank and Newham Council are collaborating with independent creative producer Tracky Crombie to produce a touring festival in the borough featuring roller-skating, live music from east London-based artists, creative workshops and a community kitchen. 

A finale performance, ‘Dystopia to Utopia: reimagining our future’, will be choreographed by Dannielle ‘Rhimes’ Lecointe and co-produced by East Bank and East London Dance. Tony Nwachukwu will be musical director. At sunset on 22 September 2022, the East Bank building site will come to life with projections and genre-bending performance imagining our future as we rebuild as a community following the pandemic. The performance will conclude the creative programme, as well as celebrate the upcoming opening of the first building on the UCL East campus, a major landmark for the East Bank partnership as it begins to go live. 

In addition to all of these free cultural events, East Bank has also launched a call-out for East Bank SEEDED, a series of five-month long residences for east London-based creatives, communities or collectives. V&A East, UAL’s London College of Fashion and UCL East will each run a residency, autumn 2022 – spring 2023. 

Justine Simons OBE, Deputy Mayor for Culture and the Creative Industries, said:

“Culture played a central role in the Olympic and Paralympic Games – and a decade on I am delighted it is at the heart of the legacy. East Bank will be the biggest new culture and education district in over 150 years and its first creative programme on the 10th anniversary of the Games is a huge milestone. The Great Get Together will be the perfect centrepiece along with gal-dem’s new public artworks revealing the changes we’ve seen in the pandemic. It’s a brilliant opening programme and one not to be missed.” 

Catherine Ince, V&A East Chief Curator and Tamsin Ace, Head of Cultural Programming at University of the Arts, both co-chairs of the East Bank Creative Programme Group, said:

“It is so exciting to launch East Bank’s first public creative programme on the 10th anniversary of the London 2012 Games. East Bank is unique in bringing together art, design, fashion, music, education and performance, and is all about creating opportunities and platforms for young talent and showcasing east London’s creativity. It’s fantastic to work with gal-dem and so many talented artists, designers and performers from across the four Olympic Boroughs to commission such timely new works in the Olympic Park and across east London, and we can’t wait to expand our programme as East Bank opens.” 

Leyla Reynolds, Founding member of gal-dem and curator of ‘Getting Back to Normal – Utopia/Dystopia’, said:

“I am so proud to have worked with such an incredible team of talented POC artists to curate a community-focused series of works alongside gal-dem for East Bank’s creative programme. The artists selected have produced new works that are in equal parts thoughtful, damning, illuminating and hopeful in addressing the challenges that we have faced over the last two years and will continue to face as East London changes and shifts socio-politically. They have done so with nuance, introspection and enormous creativity, drawing from both lived experience and that of the communities that are established there. If you’re local or not, I hope you get a sense that this programme of works is wholly about people.” 

Dannielle 'Rhimes' Lecointe, choreographer for ‘Dystopia to Utopia: reimagining our future’ said:

“I’m excited to be curating phenomenal work on my home turf of East London. Bringing together multiple artforms to showcase the creativity within our culture is an honour, not only because East London is the creative hub of this city, but also recognising the limitations the last two years could have had on us creatively. My hope is that this opening will help us unify and see that we’re capable of taking hardships and making something beautiful.”