When you go around the development site you can’t help but be amazed at the size and scale of it, and the enormous planning and logistical task. In the middle of the park is a bright green industrial plant – the soil washing area – where 1.4 million tonnes of the old soil will have been washed, detoxified, cleaned up and put back into the site. It seems like a metaphor for the wider redevelopment – like the soil, other parts of east London are being taken out, scrubbed up and sanitised.

Many people including and other , are concerned about what might be lost from the fabric of these communities. At the same time, it is exciting to imagine what the new development will bring. The media centre – as big as Canary Wharf laid on it’s side – is expected to provide workspace for over 20,000 once the Olympics is over, and the 500 acres of the site will the equivalent of a new Hyde park, on the doorstep of some of the poorest communities in the city to use and enjoy.

The young people we’ve been working with over the summer are some of those that stand to gain from the new opportunities the redevelopment promises, but they are cynical. They don’t believe the jobs will be for them, or that this will bring better housing choices, as they see other families they grew up with being shipped out to outer lying boroughs to make way for the build. In the films they’ve made their questions are all about how much access they will have to the riches this Olympics promises – the Olympics which was awarded on the legacy it will provide for young people.

One simple suggestion one of the films makes is for all the sports equipment to be distributed to local schools and youth clubs once the Games is over is as yet unanswered, as is the question of whether residents will get free tickets to come to the Games on their doorstep. With so many unanswered questions still, we’re tracking sites like , and will continue making films telling the story of how the development progresses, what the legacy actually is for these young people and whether rhetoric matches reality.

Questions like will the target 15% of jobs go to people in the 5 host boroughs and how much of the park will be free and open after the Games are key. Who will own and manage the land and assets and how will public versus commercial interests be balanced? The ODA claims to be meeting it’s targets and the site is truly impressive up close – but who really knows in the face of the massive PR machine that is the ODA? Are the nay-sayers who resist change right? Will we loose things that we will miss without achieving on the promises made to the communities of East London while the private developers, aided by huge government subsidy, reap the benefits? The build goes on.

This is the . Meanwhile, young people tell us they don’t feel close enough, or connected enough, to the big circus being built next door. “24” screens at the Rio cinema in Dalston Sunday 27th Sept – get in touch if you’d like to see what young people have to say.