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V&A East Museum · Stratford

Dispersal: Picturing urban change in east London

Ended25 July 2026 – 18 October 2026·Free

This exhibition has ended.

Documents 80 businesses relocated from the Lea Valley to make way for the 2012 Olympic Games. Photographers Marion Davies and Debra Rapp systematically recorded these spaces between 2005-2007, preserving a record of East London's industrial heritage before its erasure.

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One photograph shows a worker deboning meat for mince beside a pile of ribcages. Another catches salmon being hauled out of H Forman & Son's old cold store. Both were taken around 2005, in the stretch of the Lea Valley you can see from the gallery window.

To build the 2012 Olympic Park, 284 trades and businesses between Stratford and Hackney Wick had to move. From 2005 to 2007 Marion Davies and Debra Rapp photographed 80 of them, in colour and black and white: belt-makers, zinc galvanisers, car repair yards, the Royal Opera House's riverside scenery workshop. You walk out of the pictures and onto the Level 3 terrace overlooking the same ground. One shot shows the towpath under the Northern Outfall Sewer, which joggers now know by its rebrand, the Greenway.

Leigh Hatts, who writes about the Lea, called it "free and rewarding"; Stephen Emms found it "humbling". Entry is free, with late opening to 10pm on Thursdays and Saturdays. It closes Sunday 18 October.

Look for

  • The Carmen set

    Look for painters at the Royal Opera House's riverside scenery studio, opposite Fish Island, working on a set for Carmen laid flat across the floor.

  • H Forman's cold store

    Salmon being retrieved from the smokehouse's old cold store in the scramble to clear the site before the Games.

  • Deboning for mince

    A worker strips meat for mince production, surrounded by a heap of ribcages.

  • The Northern Outfall Sewer

    The Lea towpath passing under the sewer embankment that has since been renamed The Greenway.

Good for

  • Cheap Culture
  • Evening Visits
  • Locals Who've Seen It All

Skip if

You want the Olympics' sporting story: this is about the businesses moved out to build the park.

Also at V&A East Museum

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