In the month of June Urban Experiments held its first two cross cutting theme workshops on city cultures and on city materialities. Stimulating discussion took place around a group of papers which at the City Cultures workshop included Michelle Bastian’s paper on ‘Transition Towns ‘, Mark Jayne’s paper on ‘Worlding a city: Twinning and urban theory’and Alban Webb’s discussion of cinematic representations of disaster threats to the city at the city cultures event. At the City Materialities workshop the papers included Francis Dodsworth and Sophie Watson’s paper on ‘Shaping Religious Community in East London’ and Evelyn Ruppert’s discussion of 'Methodological Experiments' illustrated by her bollards project, while others described their new research projects.

 Over 25 members in total attended from across the CRESC research themes, and new connections and synergies in urban research began to emerge. We are pleased to see that the new Urban Experiments ‘experiment’ is now fully launched following the annual lecture by Professor Andrew Ross on ‘Is Urban Sustainability possible in the Age of Climate Justice’, the launch of the New Companion to the City (edited by Gary Bridge and Sophie Watson), to which many CRESC members contributed chapters, and  we look forward to developing more connections and research agendas at the cross theme CRESC Annual Conference on ‘Framing the City’ in September. Three new CRESC working papers from Urban Experiments have also been published in recent months.