V&A on building community in the East
We were delighted that Deputy Director and Chief Operating Officer Tim Reeve was able to give us the V&A vision for its new cultural hub investment in East London on two sites which will open up the work of the museum to local communities.
Tim opened our cultural and regeneration forum this week at Goldsmiths' Hall with a lecture on the outreach and 'co-design' work that the V&A Museums is doing in East London, Scotland and China. He then joined our first panel debate of the morning, which focussed on the creation of new cultural attractions in the capital, with Sharon Ament, Director of the Museum of London, Founding Director of Stanton Williams, Paul Williams and Britannia Morton, Chief Operating Officer of Sadler's Wells.
The V&A's new museum in Scotland is already a well documented success, adding a much needed major cultural facility to the city of Dundee. Tim described the important research projects that the V&A is involved in through its building of a new museum at 'Design Society' in Shenzhen, China. While at Here East in London, the V&A is creating a 150,000 square foot collections and research centre where the public can view the 'behind the scenes' work of the museum, located at the new tech and innovation campus re-purposed after the 2012 Olympic Games. Watch Tim speak in the video clip above,
During the panel discussion, Tim made the point that the V&A's new venture is exciting because of the strong hand that the community will have in shaping it. Watch him below: