Regeneration Songs: Sounds of Investment and Loss in East London

Regeneration Songs: Sounds of investment and loss examines the role of the artist in regeneration. The book is an output of a Leverhulme Artist in Residence grant I secured for artist Alberto Duman to collaborate with the MRes programme I lead at the University of East London. Alberto worked on a socially engaged project with musicians from East London to record tracks to go with a promotional film, entitled ‘Regeneration Supernova’ that Newham Council produced to show to investors at the Shanghai Expo. He had originally obtained a copy of the film under a Freedom of Information request, which was silent, sparking the idea that local artists and musicians should have the chance to record their own interpretations and responses to the changes taking place around them. Alongside the album, we edited a book commissioning a variety of artists, academics, journalists and activists. A number of the contributions examined the role of artists in the regeneration process and my own chapter, Setting the Scene: Thirty years of regeneration in East London, investigated the ‘placemaking’ strategies employed by local authorities, based on American policy prescriptions.