Building Community: Collaborating, Supporting, and Growing Together
We're focused on closely collaborating with the amazing people that surround us, delivering a series of programmes to positively impact our immediate community.
In the past, we've worked with local primary school students to develop coding skills, partnered up with social enterprise Change Please and sponsored an immersive pop-up art exhibition looking at youth loneliness in London. We also recently created The Orchard — an oasis of fruit trees that offer shade and calm to those working and living here — and supported early-stage go-getters through the Young Entrepreneurs Alliance six-month programme, helping with everything from creating a business plan to maintaining a healthy work/life balance.
They’re just some of the ways we're proudly supporting our local community and benefiting those visiting, working and living in Stratford Cross.
Lendlease Challenge
Every year, local students are challenged to come up with an artistic interpretation of what Stratford means to them, with the winning design being displayed in the Visitors Centre entrance of The Pavilion.
Creative Wick Music Academy
Supporting local musical talent with the help of some of Hackney Wick’s best professional musicians, writers, and producers, Stratford Cross supports Creative Wick Music Academy’s objective to champion culture and creativity in the area.
London Youth Rowing
London Youth Rowing has the power to change children's lives. Running a number of youth programmes alongside secondary schools — including 10 in Newham — it sets active young people up for success.
Open City Accelerate
Open City Accelerate supports underrepresented students in East London interested in exploring a career in the built environment sector. A free pioneering design, education and mentoring programme, with regular visits to urban projects throughout London.
Echo Civic
ECHO — Economy of Hours — is a grassroots East London organisation we work with on a number of community initiatives. Ranging from business incubation programmes to grassroots community donations, it connects people with a network which makes them tick.
SHIFT
Stratford Cross is also keen to promote wider collaborations with its neighbours, inspiring new thinking that can shape better urban futures for all. Partnering with SHIFT London, together we’re determined to make the area safer, healthier and more sustainable for people to live and work. But this progress won’t happen alone.
The goal is to build an ecosystem of innovators, experts and citizens, all working to find solutions across climate, health and mobility. This has already started, with a diverse range of organisations from government, academia, community and business joining the founding partners: Lendlease, HereEast, UAL, UCL, Loughborough University, London Legacy Development Corporation and Plexal. All that’s left is a place to trial their ideas, prove they work or roll them out at scale, and there’s no better test-bed than the Queen Elizabeth Olympic Park – a real-world, 560-acre living lab where SHIFT can help people experiment, collaborate and innovate.
