A Night At The Storehous­e

A bold idea is just a spark – until it’s given the space to flourish. A museum is just a museum – until the walls and glass cases come down.

Last week, we invited guests to join us in exploring a reimagined museum like never before. One that embodies every inch of Here East’s ‘Create at Scale’ ethos: The V&A East Storehouse.

Though there were many opportunities to connect and share ideas, this wasn’t just a typical networking event – it was an exclusive invitation to experience the future of cultural exploration.

With immersive dining and exclusive access to one of London’s most exciting new exhibitions, “A Night At The Storehouse” saw us go behind-the-scenes after hours to explore all that this next-generation museum has to offer.

What did we get up to? Read on to find out.

Bowie, Balloons, & Beyond

What began as an exploration of the spaces around our Press Centre, soon became a journey through another world entirely – David Bowie’s universe.

Imagine this: A sea of hundreds of floating silver balloons suspended in total darkness all around you. As Bowie’s iconic music fills the room, strobe lighting slices through the air, creating a stop-motion effect that captures snapshots of every single moment.

This was the mesmerising world that Jason Bruges Studio created in one of our offices, blurring the lines between art and music with a one-day-only immersive installation as a living tribute to Bowie’s hit song “Sound and Vision.” Filling our warehouse with electric energy, this exhibition was designed to be felt, not observed, and was a boundary-pushing example of what creating at scale looks like in action.

Curious to learn more? Read about the exhibition in Wallpaper’s article here, which dives deeper into the inspiration behind it from the perspective of its creators, Richard Broom and Jason Bruges.

Create at Scale

The journey continued across campus, as guests were given exclusive access to the V&A East Storehouse and the David Bowie Centre, an archive revealing over 80,000 items – from costumes, instruments, and handwritten lyrics, to unfinished creative works – made public for the first time.

Wandering around the huge halls of the Storehouse – home to the world’s largest Picasso, the Torrijos ceiling, and a 1630s colonnade – guests had the chance to explore the V&A’s vast collection up close, interacting with certain items (including the 1948 Olympic Torch and David Bowie’s Ziggy Stardust costume) as part of the museum’s ‘Order and Object’ service.

The night culminated in the heart of the Storehouse with an immersive three-course dinner – the largest ever hosted in the space – with the grand finale a showstopping mille-feuille dessert that mirrored the Storehouse’s architecture, scale and intricacy.

Between courses, we heard from Here East CEO, Gavin Poole; Here East COO, Mike Magan; and the V&A’s Deputy Director and Chief Operating Officer, Tim Reeve, who explained why the partnership between Here East and the V&A is so special.

“For us, scale isn’t about size for its own sake. It’s about possibility; about giving ideas room to grow, to collide, to take risks – and to reach audiences and communities that might otherwise be left out,” said Gavin. “That’s why the V&A East Storehouse belongs here – in an ecosystem we’re so proud of. Where culture sits alongside education, research, technology and creativity, and where the boundaries between disciplines, spectators and curators, are deliberately blurred.”

Culture, Reimagined

The boundaries between innovation and creativity are being redrawn and the rulebook on cultural experiences rewritten – and the V&A East Storehouse is holding the pen.

Here East is where unconventional thinkers create at scale; the Storehouse is where they come face-to-face with the creative exploration that fuels it. This event was not only a night to remember: It was a night to reimagine, to reinterpret, and to rethink cultural access as we know it. It was a night to demonstrate what being bold enough to design spaces not to contain culture – but to unleash it – looks like.

Thank you to everyone who joined us, to Delancey and to the V&A for joining us to reimagine what’s possible.