The SMARTlab is UEL’s Digital Media Institute – operating as both a centre of excellence in art/technology research, and a new Media R&D centre and incubator for emergent practices and products.

 

SMARTlab makes very real the possibility for increasing the social impact of technology development at the local level first, and then at the national and international levels. The facility aims to provide avenues for sustainable development and skills training in art, media and technology innovation for all of the diverse communities of East London: to be inclusive of the locality’s vibrant colours, diversities of language and social concerns.

 

With an ever-expanding research team, SMARTlab’s recent move to the new Knowledge Dock Business Centre will cultivate more than a decade’s worth of research in interaction-design directly towards the cause of social inclusion in the Thames Gateway region.

 

 

SMARTlab’s three main audiences of active collaborators and ‘user’ groups have traditionally been those that fall on the margins of mainstream funded innovation:

SMARTlab have worked in these access areas since their first research groups in 1996, demonstrating their long-term, deep and productive engagement with issues now referred to under the banners of ‘audience development’, and ‘widening participation’ in connected learning and shared community understanding: real inclusion through e-inclusion.

 

The philosophy of the ‘lab’ is to turn the standard format of a science laboratory on its head: to begin with the impulses and imaginations of artists; youth (especially young people ‘at risk’); women; immigrants and social activists, for instance – and build up research agendas and projects from the ground up. Essentially, SMARTlab proactively responds to real social need with digital creativity.

 

Now the team is turning to the building of bridges between communities in East London – to a study of the geography, politics, languages and social concerns of the diverse people of the Docklands, and to provide a safe PLAYroom for creative experimentation.

 

What uniquely differentiates SMARTlab from other institutes is the liberating, human element of play involved. There is a playful, irreverent, improvisational sense of immediacy and respect for difference that marks the SMARTlab approach to providing artistic and technological solutions to local and global social problems.