BBC
A core purpose of the BBC Music is the performing, recording and broadcasting of live music across a full range of genres to the widest possible audience. The relocation of its music studios to East Bank is driven by this purpose and builds on the BBC’s role as Olympic Broadcaster.
The new site will include state-of-the-art recording facilities and will be the home of the world-renowned BBC Symphony Orchestra & Chorus and BBC Singers, with a substantial presence from the BBC Concert Orchestra. It will host recording sessions and live performances across all genres from global stars to emerging talent. These facilities, alongside an extensive programme of learning and outreach projects and collaborations with partners in the cultural district, will contribute to establishing east London as a world destination for music.
Sadler's Wells East
Sadler’s Wells is a world-leading creative organisation dedicated to dance in all its forms. With a rich theatrical heritage of over three centuries, it offers a year-round programme of performances and learning activities. Its mission is to make and share dance that inspires us all. Its vision is to create, through dance, a depth of connection beyond borders, cultures and languages, so we see ourselves in each other.
Audiences of over half a million come to Sadler’s Wells’ three London theatres each year, with many more enjoying its touring productions at venues across the UK and around the world and accessing its content through digital channels. Sadler's Wells commissions, produces and presents more dance than any other theatre in the world, embracing the popular and the unknown. Since 2005, it has helped to bring over 170 new dance works to the stage, many of them involving its 16 Associate Artists, three Resident Companies and four Associate Companies – the most exciting talents working in dance today.
Sadler’s Wells nurtures the next generation of talent through a range of artist development initiatives and reaches over 30,000 annually through its learning and engagement programmes.
Located in Islington, north London, Sadler’s Wells’ current building is the sixth to have stood on site since entrepreneur Richard Sadler first established the theatre in 1683. The venue has played an illustrious role in the history of theatre ever since, with The Royal Ballet, Birmingham Royal Ballet and English National Opera having all started at Sadler's Wells.
Sadler’s Wells is to open an additional mid-scale venue in east London in 2022. The new space will be at the heart of the East Bank project, a new cultural and education district in Queen Elizabeth Olympic Park in Stratford, which will also include BBC, UAL’s London College of Fashion, UCL and the V&A in partnership with the Smithsonian Institution. As well as a 550-seat auditorium, Sadler’s Wells’ new venue will include a choreographic centre and a hip hop theatre academy, the first of their kind in the world to be run by a theatre.
London College of Fashion, UAL
Founded in 1906, London College of Fashion, UAL is a leader in fashion design, media and business education. Part of University of the Arts London, it has been nurturing creative talent for over a century, offering courses in all things fashion. It encourages students to examine the past and challenge the present, to form their own ideas. It gives them the skills, opportunities – and above all, the freedom – to put those ideas into practice.
At East Bank, London College of Fashion has a unique opportunity to bring together our community of 6,500 students and staff for the first time, and to invite the public into our open campus. Here, digital developers will work alongside designers; psychologists will collaborate with image creators; and marketing theorists will join forces with curators. London College of Fashion, UAL will redefine what fashion is by connecting its range of disciplines for the first time and under one roof, and show London and the world what these possibilities look like.
Read more on LCF's move.
UCL East
UCL is consistently ranked among the top 10 universities in the world*. Since 1826, it has championed independent thought and broken boundaries in research to make a positive impact in London and across the globe. It was the first university to welcome students of all faiths, or no faith, and the first to educate women on an equal footing with men.
UCL’s new university campus at East Bank is the biggest development in our nearly 200-year history, giving us the scale and space we need to continue that disruptive thinking and find solutions to the biggest problems facing people and the planet. Around 4,000 students and 700 staff will work together and collaborate with local communities and businesses in cutting-edge new research centres specialising in ecology, data, robotics, AI, urbanism, culture, assistive technology, engineering, heritage and health.
UCL East’s One Pool Street base, opening in the autumn of 2022, is full of multidisciplinary research labs and studios with a lecture theatre doubling as a cinema, a shop, café and homes for more than 500 students. Marshgate, which is opening in the autumn of 2023, includes eight floors of hi-tech research labs, workshops, collaboration spaces, a library and a café .
Our UCL East campus will be accessible, sustainable and open to the public with exhibition spaces and specially commissioned art by local artists for everyone to enjoy.
*QS World University Rankings 2010 – 2022
V&A East
One of the UK’s most significant new museum projects, V&A East celebrates global creativity and builds on the V&A’s long-standing heritage in east London and founding mission to make the arts accessible to all. Currently under construction in Stratford’s Queen Elizabeth Olympic Park, V&A East encompasses two new sites – V&A East Storehouse opening at Here East in 2024, and V&A East Museum opening on Stratford Waterfront in 2025. Underpinned by values of equity, empathy, openness and sustainability, V&A East is committed to creating opportunities for young people and fostering the next generation of creatives. Across its two sites, V&A East will celebrate making, highlight under-represented movements and voices, advance cultural conversations, and support the creation of new work, with its collections and buildings acting as a catalyst and studio space to platform new ideas. V&A East is part of East Bank, the Mayor of London’s £1.1 billion Olympic legacy project, which will create a new arts, innovation and education hub in Stratford’s Queen Elizabeth Olympic Park.
Foundation for Future London
Foundation for Future London is an independent charity created to connect communities, the new East Bank and its globally renowned arts, innovation and cultural partners to ensure East Bank is London’s must-visit destination and becomes a resilient, thriving, world-class neighbourhood of local and global significance. We're fundraising to expand grant-making opportunities for East Bank communities and partners and facilitating creative placemaking, to support local places, learning, training and employment through arts, education, culture and innovation. Our vision is for a vibrant and inclusive creative East Bank, creating authentic engagement with local people of East London in the boroughs of Hackney, Newham, Tower Hamlets and Waltham Forest.
London Legacy Development Corporation
The London Legacy Development Corporation (LLDC) is the Mayor of London’s development body for Queen Elizabeth Olympic Park and the surrounding area.
Working with the LLDC and with support from central government, the Mayor is working with local authorities, cultural businesses and venues, artists, creative entrepreneurs and civil society to make sure the full potential is realised for London and for Londoners.