New professional network for Royal Docks creatives – launching 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.

Last year 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.

The Royal Docks Creative Network will bring 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 ensure the network is relevant and useful, we are planning a pilot phase with a limited number of participants to help shape the network. This ‘pilot group’ will be 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.

Together we will look at questions such as:

• What social and networking activities would be most useful, where might they take place and how often?
• How can network meetings be most useful - what should they include?
• How should the network be structured and how might it develop?
• What should the network be called?

After the pilot stage, the Royal Docks Creative Network will be open to all creative professionals – individuals and organisations - who live or work here.

Please let us know if you are interested in being part of the pilot phase of the Royal Docks Creative Network here by Friday 28 Jan, and we will be in touch in early February. The first meeting will take place on the afternoon of 24 February.

If you want to find out more before applying, we are hosting two informal, online sessions on Zoom on Monday 24 January at 1pm or Tuesday 25 January at 5pm. Please email us at royaldocksevents@london.gov.uk to register. Or, if you would like to speak to us at another time, please let us know and we can arrange a call.

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 are establishing 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.