The "Living" Cambridge Room

The Living Room of Cambridge is an imaginative storytelling space where you help to shape the story of the city. Imagine a Room somewhere in Cambridge, not an office or a museum, but a living space that collects memories, ideas and hopes. It listens to what people notice about the city: what’s growing, what’s disappearing and what could change for the better.

During this drop-in session, you’ll use a set of creative story cards as prompts to build the Room’s story together. Each card begins with an unfinished sentence, such as “When the city changed, the Room sighed and…” or “The Room was trying to explain this corner of the city to someone who’d never been here…”. You can finish the stories with your own writing, sketches, or even quick dialogue between the Room and the city.

All your contributions, drawings, words and ideas, will be collected into a shared, growing story about Cambridge. By the end of the session, we’ll have a large visual map filled with everyone’s stories, showing how people of different ages imagine the city’s life, its changes and its future.

This workshop invites you to think about Cambridge not just as a place of buildings and roads, but as something alive and full of voices.

You don’t need to be good at writing or drawing, just bring your imagination. The prompts are designed to make you think about how people and places are connected, how climate and urban change affect daily life, and how storytelling can help us to understand and reshape our surroundings.

By the end, you’ll have helped to write a collective story. The finished piece could become a part of ongoing research at Cambridge Room, exploring how stories, creativity and participation can shape the way we understand and design our cities.

This event is open to anyone aged 12 years and above, and you can join at any time during the 4-hour session. All materials are provided, and there’s no right or wrong way to take part, just bring curiosity, creativity and conversation.