The Belle Vue Studio, Bradford

A unique archive of photographs which records the changing face of a British industrial city through the 20th century is now being brought to a national audience in a BBC documentary, as Tim Smith, long-term friend and supporter of the Migration Museum, recounts. When the Belle Vue Studio opened in 1926 on Manningham Lane in… Read more

“For Sama” – a film you should see (unless you’re an MP, maybe)

We were told that the absence of a large screen was due to the Extinction Rebellion protests in Westminster Square. The reason for the absence of anything but a small handful of MPs was not given, so we could only speculate: XR as well? Brexit-induced agoraphobia? indifference to the plight of Syria and its citizens?… Read more

Hold the Line – retracing a 90-year-old journey

The route from south-east Europe to north-west Europe is one taken by thousands of people seeking asylum and refuge from war and persecution. Newspapers constantly present this as a contemporary challenge, but, as this blog illustrates, this is a well-trodden path – for the artist Freya Gabie this route is the basis of a project… Read more

“Being in movement is being alive” – Belén L.Yáñez, artist in residence

Belén L.Yáñez is the last artist in residence in the art studio at the Room to Breathe exhibition. It has been exciting to see this space filled with so many different artistic practices and to witness how visitors have responded to them. Belén comes from Galicia, a land of migrant people or, as she calls… Read more

“The whole world is here . . . ”

The New Londoners, an exhibition featuring portraits of families from all over the world who call London home, is on display in the Breathing Space café section of the Migration Museum until 27 May. This blog profiles the exhibition, which features the photographs of Magnum photographer Chris Steele-Perkins, a long-term supporter of the Migration Museum.… Read more

On knowledge, football and forgiveness

This is a short posting about football, but really it’s mostly about forgiveness. At a time when divisions run deep and animosity is in the air, when Crystal Palace’s goalkeeper is apparently ‘desperate’ to learn about the Second World War if only to understand why the Nazi salute he was photographed making might have been… Read more

Shorsh Saleh – weaving identities

In April we welcome a new artist in residence to Room to Breathe: the multimedia artist Shorsh Saleh. Shorsh’s display in the art studio inside the exhibition reveals a range of delightful artistic practices, from miniature paintings, installations to carpet weaving. His body of work reflects his layered and complex identity both as an individual… Read more

Textiles and lullabies – Ceyda Oskay’s residency in the art studio

Ceyda Oskay is the new artist in residence in our current exhibition, Room to Breathe. As with previous artists, we asked Ceyda and the curator in residence of the art studio, Dima Karout, a series of questions and answers to find out more about Ceyda’s artistic practice. Ceyda uses textiles to explore symbolic themes around… Read more

Art therapy with asylum seekers and refugees: the New Art Studio

We are approaching the end of our third monthly residency in our current exhibition, Room to Breathe: the New Art Studio, an art therapy practice supporting asylum seekers and refugees in London, will be leaving the gallery on 24 February, and Ceyda Oskay will be moving into the space the following week. In the course… Read more

Karl Marx’s London

Much is made of Britain’s reputation for providing refuge for people seeking political asylum but many consider such self-congratulation undeserved, pointing instead to Britain’s relative resistance to taking in Jewish refugees before and during the Second World War, to the small number of Vietnamese boatpeople taken in in the 1970s (in comparison with those taken… Read more

What have EU nationals ever done for the UK’s heritage sector?

In this guest blog Olivia Bridge considers the contribution EU nationals have made to the museum sector, and what impact the UK’s withdrawal from the EU may have on the culture and heritage industries. Artists and, more generally, people working in the culture and heritage industry have always been conspicuous for their mobility, travelling across… Read more

The art studio as a ‘room to breathe’

Room to Breathe at the Migration Museum takes visitors on an immersive journey through a series of interconnected rooms, revealing the multi-layered experience of migrants and refugees arriving in a new country. Intimate personal stories are brought to life through audio recordings of oral histories as visitors go through the different rooms. At the centre… Read more

Dima Karout – artist and curator in residence of the art studio in Room to Breathe

Dima Karout is our first artist in residence for our Room to Breathe exhibition and will be curator in residence of the art studio in the exhibition, overseeing a series of residencies by migrant artists. In this blog post, Dima introduces her artistic practice and approach and explains how our artist-in-residence series will work. Read more

Migration, population ageing, and labour force participation

When people express anxieties about immigration, they tend to do so in terms of its economic, social or cultural effect on the country – and occasionally all three. Of these, the social effect of immigration continues to be the most divisive, with strident voices expressing bitterly opposing views. As far as the other two are… Read more

Island to Island

This is a guest blog by photographer Tim Smith, a long-standing friend of the Migration Museum Project and contributor to our 100 Images of Migration exhibition. He describes the background to Island to Island – Journeys Through the Caribbean, a new exhibition at Leeds Central Library which runs from 27 June until 27 July 2018.  A… Read more

A Polaroid for a Refugee

A guest blog by Giovanna Del Sarto, creator of A Polaroid for a Refugee, a photographic project depicting points of transition in the lives of individual refugees, a selection of images from which we are displaying at the Migration Museum at The Workshop in June 2018. Read more

A new brochure and a cloud’s silver lining

We’re putting the finishing touches to our new brochure (our sixth, by my reckoning), which we hope to have ready in paper form and as a pdf on our website in the next few weeks. It’s always an interesting process: taking stock of how far we have travelled and how much we have done, re-examining… Read more

Moving Stories – a competition that has moved us all

© Hugo de la Rosa Paulet

A guest blog by Asher Goodenough, Subject Advisor for History at OCR, on the Moving Stories competition, which the Migration Museum Project ran in partnership with OCR. Read more

River deep, mountain high – two weeks in April 1968

The title is a reference to the song made famous by Ike and Tina Turner in 1966, lavishly and operatically (some might say bombastically) produced by Phil Spector. Fortunately for this blog, Eric Burdon and the Animals (themselves not averse to musical pyrotechnics) reprised the song in 1968, the year that is the focus of… Read more

Cultural diversity in London, 1821

For many people, there was a golden age when Britain was truly British, populated by the British, with shared cultural and religious values. This golden age is variously identified as that of King Arthur, or Elizabeth I or Victoria, or Churchill, among others. As is the case with most golden ages, all too often the… Read more

Grade I status conferred on British mosque with extraordinary history

On Tuesday 13 March, Historic England conferred Grade I listed status on the Shah Jahan Mosque in Woking, Surrey, which thereby became the first mosque to receive this status in the country. There had been other registered mosques in the UK before the Woking mosque, the earliest on record being the Liverpool Muslim Institute, which… Read more