John Braime, Volunteering Services Unit

What happens when you put a roomful of academics, postgrad students and other UCL staff together with people from London’s community and charity organisations?

In the spirit of curiosity, this is exactly what we did on 30 May at Creating Connections 2, held in the Roberts Building Foyer at UCL. The idea was to find new and unexpected areas for collaboration between UCL and local communities.

In a way, it was a bit like speed dating – with all of the uncertainty that that format entails. Could we find a happy match between a mathematician and a youth group, an archaeologist and a refugee charity, a librarian and staff at a nature reserve? We were determined to find out.

The event itself was the product of some creative connecting – between UCL’s Public Engagement Unit, the Volunteering Services Unit and local resource swapping network Camden Shares.

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UCL hosted hundreds of designers, coders and creative thinkers over the weekend of 21–22 October while they pitted their wits against global problems, writes Kate Oliver, Communications, Marketing and Events Manager, UCL Engineering.

In the ground floor of Civil, Environmental & Geomatic Engineering, students from CEGE and Computer Science worked with hackers on a Water Hackathon. Across the Quad, the North Cloisters became a centre for top developers from as far away as the US to hunker down and work non-stop on tasks for charities world-wide at the first GiveCamp in the UK.

Read more on the UCL Engineering website.