Changemakers of the East End

Using local history to imagine place-based futures

What

Community Project

Collaborator

Tower Hamlets Local History Archives The National Archives

When

2024

Services

People research

Creative outputs

Activations

Barriers to accessing archives leave important local stories untold

Many residents of Tower Hamlets, especially younger and underrepresented communities, feel disconnected from the borough's archives. Barriers to access—whether practical, cultural, or psychological—leave these collections underutilised and their stories untold. We wanted to explore how we could make Tower Hamlets’ rich history of changemaking accessible, engaging, and inspiring to new audiences? The history of the zine as a radical counter cultural form of publishing made it the perfect meduim to explore in this project.

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We built creative workshops and a roving ‘Zinocopter’ to bring history to life around the borough

The project began with two creative workshops in the Tower Hamlets Archives. Young people explored histories of local changemakers and protest movements with the help of librarians, learning to navigate the archives as they did. Only the of these young people had ever visited the archive. We then used these stories to discuss futures of the borough, and everyone created their own zine inspired by our discussions.

These zines were then showcased through a roving engagement tool—the ‘Zinocopter’. This portable, interactive table had rotating arms to make an interactive display of a custom collection and offered space for visitors to make and add their won zine to the archive collection. The ‘Zinocopter’ allowed us to playfully engage audiences who would never normally come to the archive. We popped up at three diverse venues across the borough:

Idea Store, Canary Wharf: Engaging library visitors in zine-making and archival storytelling.
All Points East Festival: Connecting community members during the music festival's community days.
Toynbee Hall: Featuring zines and queer archival histories at a vibrant queer comedy night.

Each pop-up included curated archival displays tied to the venue, such as queer histories, music in Tower Hamlets, and changemaking legacies.

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A reusable engagement approach for local history archives

The Zinocopter and surrounding workshops served as a flexible, replicable model for creative public engagement, popping up in diverse spaces like libraries and festivals to introduce the archives to new audiences. The engagemetns were really popular with the public and archivists alike, and piloted an approach for participatory, creative methods to deepen community connections to local history, and inspire personal changemaking.

We are in conversation with other local archives about using the tool to bring to life parts of their collections as well. If you are a local archive drop us a line!