EU Researcher Night 2012 gives a unique opportunity to host a prestige community event in post Olympics East London, to coincide with the reopening of the refurbished Great Hall in the People’s Palace, reinforcing our institution’s historical roots and to helping signal the enhanced institutional commitment to research dissemination through the creation of our new academic Centre for Public Engagement. A day of events for all ages will culminate in a grand Variety Show extravaganza reinforcing that Queen Mary and her researchers are and will continue to be a part of the community. To achieve this our work in the lead-up to the night will be focused on preparing materials that will be available for attendees and, as importantly, for a much longer-term web-based audience. This approach allows us to embed both the information and web-based activities into a dedicated Public Engagement website which will be sustained beyond the event itself. Researchers’ night will be further enhanced by working with media partners Mile End Films and The Naked Scientist, two successful groups who use current media technologies such as webcast, podcasts and radio broadcasts to reach the general public. The Naked Scientists, reaches a potential audience of 6 million listeners across the East of England and has on average of 5 million downloads of their podcasts a year. Through these media groups we estimate an outreach potential of over one million people through our radio broadcast and post dissemination activities. In the long term we will build on the success of the event by nurturing the networks and connections stemming from this high profile EU event.