In February 2026, UCL launched its bicentennial celebrations, opening a year of exhibitions, installations, performances, and public events marking 200 years since its foundation (see the full programme here). As part of these celebrations, I was invited to contribute with one of my favourite long-term installation: the Time Telephone.
A Familiar Phone Box with a Story
If you’ve spent time around UCL in recent years, you may have already spotted it, the distinctive red telephone kiosk K6 originally designed by Sir Giles Gilbert Scott has travelled between Marshgate, the UCL Institute of Education, the Connected Environments Lab, and even at the University of Sheffield.
In its first iteration, the installation invites visitors to “call” the past and listen to recordings of children’s play gathered across generations and locations in the UK during the EPSRC Playing the Archive project, offering a simple yet powerful way to connect with shared cultural memories. You can read more about its concept and development on our Connected Environments website, on the Iona and Peter Opie Archive website and from our book Playing the Archive: From the Opies to the digital playground
A New Home for UCL 200
For the UCL 200 celebrations, the Time Telephone has taken up residence in the UCL Student Centre as part of the Two Centuries Here exhibition. In this new setting, the Time Telephone invites students, staff, and visitors to pick up the handset and explore stories from UCL’s past.
The recordings featured in this iteration come from Generation UCL: an oral history of student life in London. The installation includes excerpts from more than 90 interviews recorded between 2022 and 2025, drawn from research by Professor Georgina Brewis and Dr Sam Blaxland for their upcoming book Student London: A New History of Higher Education in the Capital.
Within the first two months of its opening, the Time Telephone has received over 600 calls and counting.
A big thank you goes to Dean Veall for the support during the installation, and Cyrus Shroff whose careful restoration work refreshed the phone box after more than eight years of uninterrupted service.
Project Origins
The Time Telephone was originally developed by Dr Valerio Signorelli as part of the Playing the Archive project, co-led by Prof Andrew Burn, Prof Jackie Marsh, Prof Andy Hudson-Smith, and Dr Duncan Hay. The project explored children’s play activities from past and present, and was created in collaboration with:
- UCL Knowledge Lab,
- UCL ReMAP
- The Bartlett Centre for Advanced Spatial Analysis (CASA)
- The University of Sheffield
- The Young V&A
- The Bodleian Libraries
- The British Library
The concept of the TimeTelephone was co‑created and tested with primary school children in Tower Hamlets by Prof John Potter, Dr Kate Cowan, and Dr Valerio Signorelli, with recordings collected in Sheffield, Cardiff, London, and Aberdeen by Dr Julia Bishop, Dr Catherine Bannister, and Alison Somerset-Ward.