New professional network for Royal Docks creatives - Join now!

Are you a creative professional or organisation based in the Royal Docks?

The Royal Docks Team is delighted to invite you to join a new network to meet each other, explore opportunities for exchange and collaboration, share ideas, and to help shape Royal Docks’ creative future.

In 2021 we launched the Royal Docks Cultural Placemaking Strategy with a big vision to become London’s Cultural Engine – a workshop of the world: home to artists and practitioners, cultural organisations and creative professionals, a place where innovative ideas are germinated, and new cultural work is made. Through this new network, we want to invite you to help us, to help you, to create that vision.

Meeting quarterly, with regular socials, the Royal Docks Creative Network brings together local creative professionals to work with each other and with the Royal Docks Team to make the Royal Docks into one of the world’s greatest creation centres. Our aim is that this network will help support our cultural ecosystem and enrich our creative life here.

To join the network and register your interest in hearing about upcoming meetings, please complete the form here

To ensure the Network is relevant and useful, it was shaped by a 8 month pilot phase in 2022 with a limited number of participants. This ‘pilot group’ was selected to represent a mix of the Royal Docks creatives including those with a range of practice, cultural identities, from different neighbourhoods, and sizes of organisation.

Building a robust creative eco-system – what do we mean?

We want everyone in the Royal Docks to be an active participant in its creative life, and for a thriving cultural scene to exist long after the Enterprise Zone has ended. A key priority for the team, therefore, will be to build a robust creative eco-system in the Royal Docks, with strong networks and partnerships between local creative organisations, businesses and individuals.

In 2022 we established three key mechanisms: a Creative Connectors group, a Creative Network, and a Programme Panel. These will involve residents, local creatives, and specialist artists and producers in the development and delivery of our cultural programme, providing opportunities for exchange, collaboration, and skills development. The ecosystem will help respond to the negative impacts of the pandemic by boosting the capacity and resilience of local creative practitioners, providing agency to local people, and offering development opportunities and transferable skills to local young people.

For more details download our Cultural Placemaking Strategy.