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BLOC Launch

When: Friday, January 19, 2024, 11:00 AM - 6:00 PM
Where: BLOC, ArtsOne, Mile End

Speaker: artist Vijay Patel, filmmaker Ella Glendining, theatre maker Maria Oshodi

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2-5.30pm: Discover all of our brand new spaces including our 4K Dolby ATMOS cinema, white box projection gallery, black box production studio, surround sound post-production suite and cinema film studio. 

6.30-8pm (doors open 6pm): Round Table Event to talk about disability and access in the creative industries with artist Vijay Patel, filmmaker Ella Glendining, theatre maker Maria Oshodi and chaired by dyspraxic lecturer and artist, Daniel Oliver.

About the event

BLOC is a new state of the art and fully accessible laboratory space at QMUL, comprising a 4k cinema with Dolby Atmos sound, a multiscreen gallery space, studios and post-production facilities.   

From 2-6pm at our launch event visitors can see a rolling showreel across the cinema, gallery and studios showcasing current practice-based work from Film, Drama, People’s Palace Projects, and Electronic Engineering and Computer Science. BLOC spans work like: video installation, live art, documentary, artists’ film, participatory / community arts practices, motion capture research, sound art, immersive theatre, and more.   

The day will continue at 6.30pm with a round table discussion inviting leading figures in the fields of disability, film, drama, and community collaboration to discuss

  • How future Research and Development collaborations between HE and disability arts and cultural organisations might be developed.  
  • How can an initiative like BLOC enable the arts and cultural sector to benefit from practice-based research activity that foregrounds accessibility, inclusion, and participation?  
  • Where are we now? What challenges lay ahead? Where next? 

About the launch of BLOC

Over the last twenty years, many arts organisations and institutions have sought to demonstrate a commitment to opening-up access and opportunity, and to promote fairness in the sector. Most higher education institutions would likely claim to share these aims, but have arguably been slower in implementing them and in making an access-led approach to cultural and civic outreach central to research, education and public engagement. As artists, academics, and cultural and creative practitioners, how can we work together to ensure tat the future of creative practice and research in the arts sees accessibility and innovation as mutually significant? What are the barriers that prevent this, and how can we collaborate in removing and readdressing them?  

As we mark the opening of BLOC - a new arts research facility at Queen Mary – it seems more important than ever to consider how a culture of access is culture and not simply an afterthought or extra. Similarly, as a collaboration between the departments of Film and Drama at Queen Mary, we want to ask how the lowering of disciplinary and institutional barriers can better foster a spirit of cooperation and participation between art forms, institutions and communities. 

Designed by leading architects MacFarlane-Latter, with a brief to place accessibility as a core concern across all levels of its physical and digital infrastructures, BLOC is intended to support artists and cultural and creative organisations in the development of new ideas and practices, and in collaborations with academic researchers and students.  

Designed to enable research and development practices across film, performance, digital and new media, BLOC can support a wide range of arts activities from community theatre with young people to 3D cinema. It is comprised of five physically and digitally connected spaces: 

  • 56-seat cinema (plus up to 4 wheelchair spaces and wheelchair lift to front stage) including 4K projection, Dolby Atmos, VoiceLift, Hearing Loop and conferencing technologies 
  • White-box gallery space including immersive projection screens and sound 
  • Black-box theatre and production studio with motion capture capacity  
  • Post-production suite with video and audio editing, sound-proofed vocal recording booth, and Dante digital network connection to all other BLOC spaces 
  • Film studio with green screen 

The spaces and facilities are supported by BLOC’s venue manager Ru Dannreuther and technical manager Matt Kowalczuk. 

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