Cody Dock: 4,000 Volunteers, One Vision | Know Your Neighbourhood | LFA 2026

Host Tanisha Raffiuddin visits Cody Dock in East London and speaks with Simon Myers and Bella Quirin from Cody Dock about what belonging looks like when it is built on collective ownership. This episode is part of the Know Your Neighbourhood series, produced in partnership with the London Festival of Architecture 2026. The theme is Belonging. 

Cody Dock sits on the River Lee in East London - on the Greenwich Meridian Line, north of the O2. It has a rolling bridge that is the first of its kind in the world, a reed bed that survived the ice age, and an ecology that includes kingfishers, the occasional seal, and a snail that has been here since before the ice age. It is also, somewhat unusually for this part of London, a community space that 4,000 people a year help build with their own hands.

Cody Dock is part of the wider Leamouth and Canning Town neighbourhood, a part of East London regenerating at pace but still - as Simon notes - disconnected in ways that developers, planners, and local authorities need to urgently address.

In this episode, you will discover:

•       What Cody Dock is and why people are surprised when they arrive

•       Collective ownership as the foundation of belonging

•       4,000 volunteers a year - and 400 names carved into a 12-tonne rolling bridge

•       The 999-year lease and thinking beyond short-term regeneration

•       The historic lifeboat and its role in the new heritage centre

•       Ecology: kingfishers, seals, the German hairy snail, and the dream of oysters back in the Lea

•       What the River Lea has been, and what it could become

•       Connectivity as the missing piece in East London's regeneration

Guests: Simon Myers and  Bella Quirin, Cody Dock. 

Host: Tanisha Raffiuddin, Creative Director, Concept Culture.

Chapters

00:00 — Introduction

01:00 — Welcome to Cody Dock

02:14 — Where is Cody Dock? Locating it on the map

03:23 — Belonging at Cody Dock: collective ownership

04:54 — 55,000 new homes and why belonging matters in a transient borough

05:14 — What is being built right now: the heritage centre and arts space

07:14 — What Cody Dock wants to stay the same

08:38 — The River Lea: London's forgotten second river

09:24 — V&A East, Sadler's Wells, and the cultural shift in East London

10:16 — The rolling bridge and 400 names carved in steel

11:44 — The 999-year lease: thinking a thousand years ahead

13:06 — High-density housing and ecology: can they coexist?

14:21 — The German hairy snail and the reed bed surviving since the ice age

15:15 — Oysters back in the Lee: a resident's vision becomes an ecology mission

18:04 — Zoom out: Cody Dock in the wider Leamouth and Canning Town neighbourhood

21:07 — What will make people keep coming back

23:48 — Know Your Neighbourhood: rapid fire round