2025
Create at Scale
2025
This year, we are celebrating impact through the lens of 'Create at Scale'. Our film brings together voices from across the Here East community, revealing what scale means to them and why they chose this campus to build their ideas.
The film captures moments of impact from the past year and from the journeys of businesses that have grown here. From sparks of creativity to ambitious projects that needed room to take shape. The result is not a report but a portrait of a community in motion, where people, ideas and possibilities continue to rise together.
Here East is a place where space and scale shape the creative process. Volume becomes a resource, freedom becomes a tool and the campus becomes a platform for innovation. Across technology, design, performance and entrepreneurship, teams use this environment to explore, experiment and produce work that could not happen elsewhere.
With universities, startups and cultural institutions side by side, the campus thrives on collaboration, fuelled by the energy of East London. It is a launchpad for new thinking and a home for the next generation.
Here East was created to give people the freedom and scale to think differently, and that is highlighted in our impact film 'Create at Scale'. I am immensely proud of how much the campus has achieved this year, supporting the community that calls it home and providing spaces and opportunities for tenants, students and local residents to come together. When you bring universities, startups, creatives and global innovators into one place, surrounded by the energy and creativity of East London, you create an ecosystem where ideas can grow, collide and become something bigger. That is what it means to create at scale.
Gavin Poole, Here East CEO
V&A: From creative thinking to creative spaces
The V&A’s presence at Here East marks a move from exploring innovation in theory to building the physical spaces where it happens. The organisation has created a cultural hub where conservation, collections and public engagement sit side by side, enabling new forms of collaboration and experimentation.
Their decision to come to Here East reflects a wider ambition to work differently and connect with new communities. The campus offered the flexibility and creative ecosystem that could support this next chapter and position the V&A within the evolving story of East London as a centre for cultural production.
We needed a space of a particular shape and size and Here East really represented for us a blank canvas. Here at Here East, we have a completely unique new museum experience which is designed around the stored collection
Tim Reeve, V&A Deputy Director & Chief Operating Officer
Conrad Shawcross' 'Umbilical' is unveiled at Here East
Here East were proud to host Conrad Shawcross’ latest monumental kinetic sculpture, The Nervous System (Umbilical), his most ambitious work to date. Displayed in Studio 10, the piece stood at an extraordinary 10 metres in height and stretched 12 metres in diameter. Its forty interlocking mechanical arms moved in a continuous, never-repeating orbit, weaving a single rope in a mesmerising sequence that felt both mechanical and organic.
The installation became a striking presence on campus, drawing visitors, collaborators and curious neighbours into its quiet, hypnotic motion. After its time at Here East, the artwork has now been shipped to MONA, the Museum of Old and New Art in Tasmania, where its journey continues on an international stage.
Here East is an amazing endeavour. The scale of the units is extraordinary and trying to encourage this type of creative enterprise on this kind of scale in Hackney in Stratford is amazing.
Conrad Shawcross RA
Where East London’s cultural edge meets future-facing ambition
As SXSW London arrived in the capital for the first time, East London became the focus of global attention, and Here East helped amplify that moment. During the festival’s debut, Here East and LMA hosted the “It All Starts Here” event, giving local talent and students the opportunity to share the stage with a wider creative and cultural presence. The event captured the spirit of the area, where hyper-local creativity meets global curiosity, and where East London’s cultural identity continues to gain visibility and momentum.
Here East sits within this shift as both a contributor and a platform. Its connection to the ideas and conversations happening around SXSW reflects the campus’s broader reach, where academic institutions, startups, creators and cultural organisations engage with audiences far beyond the local community.
Here East has always been a place that gives others the platform to shine. We build a stage on which people can perform, experiment and take their ideas further. That’s what makes this campus such a powerful launchpad for creators, innovators and institutions. It brings global energy and investment eastward while staying rooted in the culture and creativity of this part of London.
Mike Magan, Here East COO
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