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UEL secures funding for pioneering digital archive of London 2012

Thursday 2 October 2008

The University of East London (UEL) has helped secure over £100,000 to create an innovative London 2012 digital archive called East London Lives.

Due to start in October, the project is the first of its kind from a university and aims to capture the Games’ impacts in the local community through the archive in two key areas – community development and health and wellbeing.

The bid was funded by the Joint Information Services Committee (JISC) and was secured by UEL’s Library and Learning Services in conjunction with the London East Research Institute and the Institute for Health and Human Development, two leading interdisciplinary research institutes at UEL.

The East London Lives Archive will be a unique resource to support learning, teaching and research at UEL and East London as well as throughout academia, nationally and internationally.

Professor Andrew Mcdonald, Director of Libraries and Learning Services at UEL, said: “We are delighted to have won this bid as this archive will help capture the narratives of local people and the changing perceptions of the Games and its impacts for future generations.

“We can now witness London’s 2012 Olympic legacy and record, through interviews, the experiences of Londoners who witnessed the 1948 London Olympic Games, using these oral histories as points of comparison with contemporary voices and data.

Professor Gavin Poynter, Director of London East Research Institute, and co-author of ‘Olympic Cities: 2012 and the Remaking of East London’, added: “The advent of the London 2012 Olympic and Paralympic games puts our region in the global spotlight as never before. This Archive will take account of changes in the social, cultural and public health landscapes of East London.

“These are important and drastic changes that would otherwise be consigned to memory or appear as fragments in media archives years from now. We want to capture them and keep them alive for future generations.”

The archive will also be useful in other ways, such as for the future planned modules in Olympic Studies at UEL and other universities. It will also help in getting feedback from the Olympic boroughs, borough archivists, researchers, policy makers and government departments and through a national conference in the New Year.

The University of East London is closely involved in sports, health and wellbeing, and other projects in the run-up to the Games. The London East Research Institute is working on a range of research, knowledge transfer and consultancy projects for the Olympic Delivery Authority, Greater London Authority and other key agencies.

The project management team are Professor Andrew McDonald, Gurdish Sandhu, Dr Iain MacRury, Professor Gavin Poynter and Professor Adrian Renton.

For further information about East London Lives, or to suggest ideas about developing the archive, contact Dr Iain MacRury on i.m.macrury@uel.ac.uk.

University of East London: London 2012 Olympic and Paralympic Games Office

Notes to Editors

The University of East London (UEL) is a global learning community with over 28,000 students from over 120 countries world-wide. Our vision is to achieve recognition, both nationally and internationally, as a successful and inclusive regional university proud of its diversity, committed to new modes of learning which focus on students and enhance their employability, and renowned for our contribution to social, cultural and economic development, especially through our research and scholarship. We have a strong track-record in widening participation and working with industry.

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