The Memory Workshop Open Days

Explore the Memory Workshop Open Day events below, please note you need to book a ticket for each event separately: 

Full Studio Podcasting with Spencer Samuel - Friday 15 November, 4-7pm

Podcasting is an important medium for storytelling. It is used as an oral history and a place to redress historical injustices. Creatives and academics are increasingly using podcasts to produce discourse and archive the voices of those not normally present in the official record.

This session will bring a full studio podcasting suite into the UCL Urban Room to show students, academics, and creative collaborators how to use the medium as a tool for workshopping histories.

As an open session, we invite participants at entry skill levels and who are interested in historical, heritage and urban issues that relate to social-cultural storytelling.

Specialists or prospective students can check out the MA in Audio Storytelling for Radio and Podcast

Book your ticket for Full studio podcasting

Ethics of co-production with Kara Blackmore - Wednesday 20 November, 4-7pm

 

The Urban Room and Memory Workshop are invested in collaborative co-production for research, archiving, and exhibition making. This type of work is often challenging and requires a certain ethical framework to ensure that memories relating to urban, cultural, or political injustices are meaningfully understood. In this session Dr Kara Blackmore will present the new ethics framework for the Memory Workshop. She will share her experiences as Curator with four different collaborations done to date with the Urban Room. Ethics statements and risk assessments will be shared in detail to empower students, artists, academics, and community organisers interested in doing work together.

For specialists and prospective students interested in ethical-coproduction in Urban or historical settings check out the MaSc in Global Urbanism and Public History MA

Book your ticket for Ethics of co-production

Location beyond geolocation: a discussion on digital archiving - Monday 9 December, 4-7pm

Join Professor Nishat Awan in an interactive session about research and archival practices through digital platforms. Architectural practices and research on unsettlement, which uses film, coding, exhibition and collaging. The discussion will focus on the platform, topological atlas and the considerations that researchers, web designers make in co-producing open-access resources. Throughout this session participants will understand how to relate between lived experiences and map-based digital platforms.

Nishat is Professor of Architecture & Visual Culture. Her research focuses on the intersection of geopolitics and space, including questions related to diasporas, migration and border regimes. She is interested in modes of spatial representation, particularly in relation to the digital and the limits of witnessing as a form ethical engagement with distant places.

Book your ticket for Location beyond geolocation

The Memory Workshop Open days: Post-processing with Spencer Samuel, Wednesday 11 December 4-7pm

Join us for a fun and interactive workshop where you'll learn about using our Memory Workshop facilities to archive, podcast and more!

Book your ticket for Post-processing with Spencer Samuel

Plan your visit

The Memory Workshop Open Days run from 15th November 2024 – 12th December 2024. Visit the Urban Room between 10am-6pm Monday-Saturday during this time to find out more about the Memory Workshop.

Special events will be hosted during this time exploring specific aspects of collection and digitisation. These events will require a ticket.

About the Memory Workshop

The Memory Workshop is a collecting and digitisation project within the UCL Urban Room. Using the idea of lab-based learning, the workshop records oral histories within London and on campus in our mini-studio. Students and partner users of the workshop can digitise vinyl records, VHS and cassette tapes as well as edit their own digital materials. This work is part of Urban Room’s commitment to supporting impactful student research and developing collaborations with artists, residents and organisations around the Olympic Park where UCL East is located.

About the UCL Urban Room

Located at One Pool Street, the public-facing UCL Urban Room hosts events, exhibitions, workshops and engagement with local stakeholders, professional audiences, and the wider public. Exploring the impact of industry, globalisation, regeneration and gentrification on the six Olympic Park boroughs and their people, UCL Urban Room is a partnership between UCL Urban Laboratory, The Bartlett, School for the Creative and Cultural Industries and UCL Library Services: Special Collections. For more information email urbanroom@ucl.ac.uk

The events and workshops are curated by Kara Blackmore, Spencer Samuel and Ishbel Tunnadine

Dr. Kara Blackmore

Dr Kara Blackmore is a curator and researcher who works at the intersections of arts, heritage, and social repair. Her practice is informed by long-term collaborations in areas affected by conflict and migration. Kara is the Curator of the UCL Urban Room where she supports experiential teaching, leads exhibition-based research, and fosters community dialogue. She is also the co-curator for the 15th Dakar Biennale (2024) under the theme of The Wake with a special guest curator section entitled We Will Stop When the Earth Roars. In this work she builds on her decolonial and feminist curatorial practice.

Spencer Samuel

Spencer Samuel is a Media Production Technical Manager working in ISD, responsible for managing and overseeing the specialist media spaces and studios within SCCI, including Media Studios, Specialist Computer Cluster rooms, BlackBox in Marshgate and the cinema in Pool Street. With over 20 years of experience in media departments and education (specifically digital media, and film production) Spencer has supported school projects, advised academic teams on practice, overseeing equipment needs for multiple modules, and led practical workshops for media classes.

Previously Spencer taught practical film modules for London Metropolitan University on their film courses. Between 2015-2023, he worked as the Senior Technical demonstrator in film & media, where he played a key role in developing and delivering audio-visual specialisms within the faculty. Before leaving, he designed, established and project managed the new London Met film studio. During the pandemic Spencer lead devising new ways to connect and teach media students online. Spencer also ran the broadcast studio at London Met, supporting journalism students in practical media production.

Spencer also has extensive experience as a freelancer on various commercial projects, working with clients such as BBC football league show for IMG, The National Gallery, Royal Academy of the Arts, London Electronic Orchestra and Hot Natured.

Spencer incorporates his rich industry experience into his teaching, aiming to share commercial knowledge to bridge the gap between theory and practice in education, with many of his students going on to earn RTS student awards.

Ishbel Tunnadine 

Ishbel Tunnadine is an image-based artist who works with experimental photographic processes and filmmaking, writing, print and film. Her work is often site-specific, exploring the relationship between fiction and memory in the urban fabric of cities, with an interest in grassroots histories and struggle, and the politics of archival practices.  

Working collaboratively is central to her art practice. With several years of experience facilitating art and filmmaking workshops in both education and arts such as BFI Film Academy, Studio Voltaire, Wysing Art Centre, Camden Summer School, City and Islington College, and PRU Schools across Bow and Hackney boroughs. She has also worked for Batalha, Centro de Cinema (Porto) as an editor of programming and their publications. Recent art residencies include BRAW Collective, Aqtushetii (Georgia), and involved in research projects as part of Stacion CCA (Kosovo).