Urban Miscellanea

2020-2022 2025-2026

Urban Miscellanea is an experimental multimedia anthology that celebrates creativity situated within the urban.


2020/21: States of Apprehension

2021/22: Urban emergency / urban rhythms

2025/26: Archiving

Urban Miscellanea:
Five years on 



Urban Miscellanea was a creative anthology imagined and developed by six MSc Urban Studies students and one MSc Environment, Politics, and Society student, all enrolled at UCL between 2020 and 2022. 

It emerged as an ode to creative expression and its ability to open spaces for meaning-making within the urban. We began curating these anthologies during the Covid-19 pandemic as a means to connect with our community of geographers and students, inspired by bell hooks’ concept of ‘engaged pedagogy’. As we studied online, mainly from home, we attempted to recreate the moments of serendipitous exchange that we would have had in university corridors, sharing thoughts about our ongoing projects in between lectures. 

In each iteration, we made use of the Urban Lab’s annual theme as a thread to tie the submissions together: ‘urban emergency’ for 2020/21, then both ‘emergency’ and ‘urban rhythms’ in 2021/22. To have come together during the first years of the pandemic and respond to it through creative expression was ultimately a labour of love, and to return to Urban Miscellanea years later to archive our work is the same. 

Five years on, our world has moved forward in ways that continue to call for us to respond,  creatively or otherwise. We see continued austerity, war, genocides, a deepening of climate chaos, and a global ramping up of state repression. A state of ‘urban emergency’ certainly persists, but so do we.

The process of archiving Urban Miscellanea found us reflecting on our collective work from years ago, as we gathered the fragments that we needed to form a coherent archive. We did not create our platform with long term preservation in mind, nor did we record every detail meticulously for posterity. Perhaps this was because, as we all know, during the pandemic time became very weird; everything felt simultaneously completely transient and like it would last forever.

The original 20/21 anthology format certainly reflects this mindset most accurately: as an interactive digital platform, it was highly creative, but it was also complicated to load and maintain. The simpler 21/22 anthology likewise speaks to the period it was curated in: a PDF that never saw the print run intended for it, amidst pandemic restrictions lifting and the priorities of ‘normal times’ returning to front and centre.

Urban Miscellanea’s new archive weaves together the submissions across the two years of the project, retrieved across our working platforms, alongside records of the original anthology formats. In deciding on a platform for this archive, we decided to strip things to the bare essentials in order to focus more on showcasing respondents’ works.


It should be noted that our process of archiving Urban Miscellanea has coincided with two important landmarks in UCL’s history: the 20th anniversary of the UCL Urban Lab, and the 200th anniversary of UCL itself. Considering the pressures bearing down on students and staff today, and the threat that higher education is under, it felt crucial that we play our part in archiving the good of these institutions: the spaces and opportunities that we carve out within them for genuine creativity, investigation, and self-expression.

We hope that Urban Miscellanea will inspire future students to also engage in their degree in the same way as we tried to: not just as an instrumental means to an end, but as a chance to explore, question, learn, create: as a chance to engage fully with the world around us.

Mia, Nikos, and Prashansa
London, Brussels, and Vancouver
March 2026


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Abigail Hill
2020/21


Quarantine Garden


Poetry
Full poem:




Quarantine Garden


As the skeletons of past traditions fell around us,
Our own private garden flourished.

When isolation saved others,
Our sense of togetherness grew.

Distance is the new rule to closeness,
With nettles growing between the cracks, separating providence.

Foresight now a shattered phenomenon,
As suspended warmth prevents our frost from thawing.

Previous connections now shields interlaced with guilt,
As we eagerly await the season where beauty blooms.

Fear has separated the rest,
But our new life becomes further intertwined.

Connections with nature are strengthened,
despite their presence having been there all along.

Individual grief has become a collective numeric,
Yet, our natural growth has its own qualities.

Current physical change imprints on future memories,
as seeds are planted in the middle of an artificial winter.

A pattern of uncertainty is becoming familiar,
with our four sides of containment running parallels.

Visual displays are utilised as tools to create calm,
But no match for a chaotic entanglement.

Sparse experiences of fresh air foster deep thinking,
reflection of strategies for our journey to freedom.

Authorisation is permitted to reflect upon growth,
Despite the difficulty of interpreting a swarm of facts.

Awaited reunions don’t reveal a path back to normality.
A choice has to be made whether to be ruled by chance.

We all pick a rose,
creating the possibility of being punctured by a thorn.






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