Olympic archive documents the changing face of East London

East Londoners are being given an opportunity to share their views on how the Olympics is affecting their lives in an online archive developed by Jisc and the University of East London (UEL).

Their blogs, videos and audio will form a public library alongside a unique searchable archive of filmed focus groups and recorded oral histories which set out to track the social impact of the Olympics on the local area, providing a resource for teaching, learning, research and policy makers.

East London Lives 2012 is a unique project as it aims to share the views of residents in the five host Olympic boroughs and their views on two key areas - community development and the health of local people in the lead up to the Games and beyond.

Ben Showers, digitisation programme officer at Jisc said: “This significant resource is one of 25 innovative digitisation projects in Jisc's enriching digital resources programme aimed at enhancing teaching and research within UK higher education. It records a precious slice of history through the creation of an unparalleled, time-specific resource and captures the changes to the lives of Londoners to 2012 and beyond.”This project will share the views of residents in the 5 host Olympic boroughs on community development and the health of local people.

Director of the London East Research Institute, Dr Iain MacRury said:  “This exciting archive will help capture the narratives of local people and the impacts on community development and health for future generations and everyones’ experience counts. East London Lives 2012 will also become a valuable resource to support learning, teaching and research at UEL and East London generally, with our new Olympic Studies module, as well as throughout academia, nationally and internationally.”

The project launch event on 30 September also featured the new London East Research Institute (LERI) publication Olympic Cities: 2012 and The Remaking of London edited by UEL’s Professor Gavin Poynter and Dr Iain MacRury.  A talk was given by Professor DaCosta, who is an internationally renowned Olympic scholar and a guest professor at Gama Filho University in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil. He is also the co-ordinator of a joint research project on urban regeneration with LERI.  

Explore the Olympic resources at the East London Lives website