Adverse direct and indirect impacts of the current COVID-19 pandemic will disproportionately fall on individuals and families from poorer backgrounds, those in public facing jobs and living in higher density housing. Tower Hamlets, the site of this study, with its pre-existing stark income and health inequalities is already a high-risk inner city area, placed in one of the richest global cities. This project will focus on the impacts of the lockdown, and its aftermath for the borough's young children, who are likely to experience new health and educational inequalities as a result of the unprecedented restrictions on mobility associated with slowing the spread of COVID-19 introduced on 23 March 2020. Tower Hamlets has a highly diverse population profile, with residents from a wide range of ethnicities and social and economic backgrounds, which offers an opportunity to identify how families deploy their interpersonal, economic and social resources to manage risks associated with living in lockdown and in recovery from lockdown. In close partnership with the borough Public Health and children's services team, we will run a repeat survey of 2000 couple and single parent families with children aged 0-4, and pregnant women; a longitudinal qualitative panel with approximately 60 household members including fathers and wider kin; and examine changing family support services, and emergent community resources such as mutual aid and peer networks. We are interested in families' cultural and inter-personal assets as well as their vulnerabilities: what new forms of managing family and community life have emerged and how are these novel methods helping young children? We will include two groups defined as vulnerable; pregnant women and shielded children. The survey tools chosen are those being run by the concurrent Born in Bradford (BiB) cohort study and by the International Network on Leave Policies and Research offering robust comparisons. Findings will help guide the borough's deployment of scarce resources in the recovery phase of the pandemic and will have relevance to all inner-city areas.

The MAPURBAN project aims to improve migrants' access to urban resources such as public transport and civic and cultural institutions' in Stockholm, Berlin and London. The project builds on existing research and urban policy to show how these can improve migrant mobility and accessibility. This will have an impact on newly arriving people's access and participation in urban society. MAPURBAN will use multinational research findings to produce new knowledge that will inform government strategies towards urban migration, re-framing immigrant integration as a multi-scalar (national, urban and local) process and as an inherent part of an inclusive and sustainable urban development.

This project is an experiment in the creation and dissemination of urban history. It establishes a publicly collaborative website of the highest calibre dedicated to the history of the London East End district of Whitechapel. This website stands as a resource in its own right and also constitutes a base for a printed volume in the Survey of London series. Begun in the 1890s, the Survey of London was founded with a commitment to the advancement of social equality and solidarity through shared understandings of a common built environment. That commitment is now renewed in this digital initiative which draws on strengths that derive from the Survey's well-established approaches to topographical and architectural history. Across decades and disparate parts of the metropolis, the Survey of London has developed an inclusive approach to urban history, with social contexts strongly presented as crucial determinants of architecture. Regularly cited for its high academic standards, the series has long presented its comprehensive synoptic accounts of urban fabric in book form, incorporating assessments of demographic, social, industrial and commercial characters based in close investigation of archives and building fabric. The Whitechapel project is the Survey of London's first initiative from within the Bartlett School of Architecture, University College London, and draws on the pioneering technological and public engagement expertise of UCL's Centre for Advanced Spatial Analysis. The map-based website involves the public in research for and the drafting and compiling of the Survey's texts and illustrations. At the same time, the project maintains full commitment to the qualities and standards that have given the Survey its strong reputation for public-service scholarship. Undertaken in partnership with Tower Hamlets Local History Library and Archives, with support from Historic England, the Whitechapel Art Gallery, the East London Mosque and Wilton's Music Hall, the Survey of London's engagement with Whitechapel includes plans for newly catalogued archives, exhibitions and events such as walking tours, as well as for the publication of scholarship in journals and, in due course, in a Survey volume. A broadly collaborative approach to understanding the architectural expressions of Whitechapel's rich histories is an appropriate way to illuminate stories of housing, commerce, religion and entertainment, wealth and poverty, dissent, reform and conflict. Immigration is a primary historical fact, embracing over centuries German, Irish, East European Jewish and Bengali settlements. Whitechapel's history and present circumstances make it an excellent testing ground for the experimental formation of a public history from below with receptivity to both difference and universality in experiences of the built environment. The material that the website hosts ranges from contemporary photographs and records back to early views, maps and architectural drawings, on to newly synthesized archive-based historical accounts of building projects to oral reminiscences. Topography will serve as a gate for the presentation of personal experiences of buildings (housing, schools, places of worship and others) whether positive or negative - articulating changes witnessed, epiphanies had, or travails borne. Alongside the forces of capitalism, social and ethnic heterogeneity, religious diversity and vernacular energy are all manifest in the area's architecture. The Survey of London is largely about agency in the built environment; the aim now is to search more deeply for evidence of ordinary agency. With support from both academic and local communities, this project will be stimulating for British architectural and social history. No urban historical series has embarked on such a venture. It aims to be exemplary, setting a new standard not only for the future development of the Survey of London but for urban histories across the world.

Community assets such as strong community networks and groups, arts and cultural activities, parks and green spaces have been shown to be associated with a wide range of health and social benefits but there are challenges for heath and care systems to realise these benefits at scale. Not everyone is able to benefit from these types of assets, with those from marginalised groups who often experience poorer health least likely to benefit. This Research Consortium will explore how local health and care systems can better interface with, develop and mobilise community assets to improve health and reduce health disparities in two contrasting geographical contexts. The Consortium will adapt a framework called 'Well Communities' to develop, plan and co-ordinate its activities. Well Communities brings together a range of asset-based community development and co-production approaches that have been tried, tested and refined across more than 40 of the most disadvantaged neighbourhoods in London and are now being transferred into the Northamptonshire context. The Consortium will build on this work to research and develop ways to scale-up, spread and embed such approaches within new Integrated Care Systems (ICSs) within and outside of London. The Well Communities Research Consortium will focus on two broad research questions: 1) What are the drivers of disparities across communities and how can new ICSs interface with, and help develop and mobilise, community assets to help tackle health disparities? 2) How can models designed to support ICSs to interface with community assets be scaled-up, embedded, sustained, and accessed to contribute to improving health outcomes, reducing disparities and creating healthier communities? This case for support is for a nine month project to build our Consortium to fully address the questions above in a subsequent three year research programme. With a focus in particular on arts-based and natural environment assets, a wide range of disciplines and cross-sectoral non-academic partners - who do not usually work together - are needed to successfully design and undertake the research programme and ensure impact. To build the consortium we will use methodologies from the Well Communities framework, including World Café, whole system workshops, participatory systems mapping and arts-based methods. These methods will facilitate engagement and co-production and develop new relationships and partnerships between people with lived experience, researchers, health and care system stakeholders, community and voluntary sector and those working in arts based and natural environment focused groups and organisations.

Until now, the textile heritage of minorities has often been the object of abusive cultural appropriation practices undertaken by fashion brands or has been systematically obscured or undervalued as 'non-fashion' produced by 'the other'. With the mass displacement of people on the rise (due to global and local political, economic, and environmental issues), it is clear that we need to rethink and address the needs and aspirations of migrant minority communities and find ways to honour their diverse cultures. Furthermore, to avoid the current situation where designers are 'parachuted' into marginalised or disadvantaged communities with the assumption that bringing their knowledge and expertise is the answer, there is a need to 'decolonise' such dominant approaches, liberating design from its legacies of colonial thought, whilst leveraging the values of diversity, inclusivity and sustainability. This research aims to provide an in-depth understanding of decolonised fashion and textile design practices through the lens of cultural sustainability. Besides the three commonly recognised pillars of sustainability (i.e. environmental, economic, and social), this research argues for a need to consider also a cultural dimension, meaning diverse cultural systems, values, behaviours, and norms. Adopting a holistic approach, this research will focus on textile and fashion artisanal practice carried out by communities of 'diverse locals', meaning refugees who, despite their traumatic journeys, retain their culture, customs and faiths, as well as a variety of invaluable craft heritage skills. This research intends to fill a gap in knowledge through its focus on what refugee communities can teach us, in terms of cultural sustainability, community resilience, and social entrepreneurship. Adopting an embedded and situated approach to designing, participatory action research will be undertaken with communities of refugees living in East London. The research participants will be selected from a variety of cultural backgrounds in light of their past experience working in the textile and fashion industry in their home countries, to leverage their untapped skills and knowledge and facilitate their potential integration in the local economy and society. Oral histories will be collected in relation to the communities' material culture, in order to make sense of their cultural heritage, conduct co-creation workshops aimed at developing social entrepreneurship models to enhance the resilience of the refugees, and outline policy recommendations for sustainable regeneration. It is expected that the research will contribute to raising project participants, design practitioners and researchers' awareness of issues of cultural sustainability, promoting decolonised fashion practice, and recognising diverse forms of entrepreneurship that go beyond traditional standards from the Global North. The research will also benefit the participating communities through amplifying their voice and agency, enhancing their fashion and textile making skills as well as entrepreneurial capabilities, and informing the development of sustainable regeneration policies. Moreover, a collection of fashion and textile artefacts embedding the cultural heritage of the participating communities will be co-created and sold in order to raise funding to support on-going community-led fashion-related entrepreneurial activities. Finally, although the field work will be undertaken with communities in east London, findings from the research will inform the development of a framework for designing for cultural sustainability, social entrepreneurship and sustainable regeneration that is apt to have broader applicability and replicability across the UK.