#SettingUpShop: Meeting Culture Where It Lives

At CUBE Studio, we’ve never been interested in doing things the traditional way. From the beginning, we’ve asked one simple question

That idea came to life this past week through our collaboration with GEN B TV’s Chris Kenna, and the visionary team at Sparks for Setting Up Shop — a cultural takeover of a real working corner shop on Brick Lane in East London.

What began as an unconventional space quickly transformed into a vibrant cultural stage. Live performances, brand installations, street photography, podcast recordings, and meaningful conversations unfolded throughout the week.

Proof that content creation doesn’t need to wait for a studio booking.

It just needs a reason. And the right tools.

Through CUBE StudioX, our mobile virtual production solution, we brought high-end creative tools — including an LED volume — straight into the heart of the community. What made this powerful wasn’t just the tech. It was the intent: to meet culture where it already lives.

This activation by GENB TV and Sparks gave emerging talent access to technology typically reserved for big-budget sets. But more importantly, it gave them freedom to try, to test, to fail, to make something real.

For us, Setting Up Shop wasn’t just an event. It was a proof of concept. A corner shop became a studio. A cultural space became a canvas. The line between location and content engine was erased.

The old idea of a studio as a fixed building, somewhere out of reach, with locked doors and intimidating systems, doesn’t serve modern creators. In a world where creativity happens everywhere, why should we ask storytellers to come to us?

Why not bring the studio to them?

That’s the core philosophy behind CUBE StudioX — our mobile and networked virtual production ecosystem.

We’re reimagining what a studio can be because we don’t just believe in scaling production. We believe in scaling access.

Virtual production has traditionally been seen as complex, expensive, and confined to high-end sound stages. But with CUBE StudioX, we’re flipping that model. We’re bringing virtual production to the communities that shape culture not waiting for them to come to us.

Setting Up Shop was a live case study in what happens when you remove the gatekeepers. By putting an LED volume inside a functioning corner shop, we proved that immersive, professional-grade production can and should exist in spaces that feel familiar, local, and open.

But accessibility is about more than location. It’s about authenticity.

It’s about giving creators from all backgrounds the tools to tell their stories their way, without compromise. It’s about reflecting the real world in the virtual one. And it’s about creating space for talent and vision that’s often overlooked.

We don’t just want to decentralise production. We want to democratise it, so every shoot, every story, every space reflects the rich diversity of the culture around it.

Huge gratitude to GEN B TV, Chris Kenna, and the Sparks team for bringing the Setting Up Shop concept to life. It was bold, fresh, unapologetically real and it’s exactly the kind of work that inspires us.

Also a special thank you to Simon Wong and AOTO for working with us on the #VP stage, and Campaign and The Drum for the press features.

This is the future of content creation, accessible, mobile, and built around people.

Let’s keep setting up shop.

Anywhere we need to. Create Beyond!