urban futures london 2022
Imagining Urban Futures with Art
This project builds on our Urban Futures programme in Accra, Ghana in December 2020. Grounded in the growing city of Accra, the programme invited engagement with the shaping of our future world.
It did this by centering art as a critical tool of expressing things that cannot easily be captured through language - expanding our ability to imagine what's possible. The programme invited artistic responses to this theme, curating them into a multi-media exhibit, alongside panel talks and arts-based workshops with local schools.
The aim of this proposed project is to extend this theme of connecting urban futures and art, but ground this in London, and in particular, at F.A.T. Studio on Old Kent Road - a new community arts space, seeking to engage more local residents in art activities, creative expression and engagement.
The project will include a day of workshops with youth. The workshops will be largely practical and experimental, led by a professional arts facilitator. It will include producing arts outputs.
Filming will take place on the day, which will include short interviews with attendees, talking about their ideas and their work. This will be edited into a short film, to be shared more widely among our networks.
We are delighted to be collaborating with students at the London School of Economics, Department of Geography and Environment, from the
Regional and Urban Planning Studies MSc.
Students will be central in working with the arts facilitator to help design an exciting, meaningful programme to engage with Urban Futures.
Students will also help organise an online panel on the ‘radical role of art in shaping urban futures’; sharing the short film on various platforms and co-writing a blog post which reflects on the events.