At the Migration Museum, personal storytelling is at the forefront of the work we do, including our learning programme. Oral history gives students a hands-on way to explore migration and local history. In this blog, James Lopez, a trainee teacher on a Teach First Summer Project, reflects on how these projects help students see how personal experiences shape broader histories.
The most rewarding experience from my years of teaching history was running an Oral History club with my students. Simply put, the club gave pupils a chance to learn about migration and local history, practice interview techniques and understand the ethics of interviewing. Each student then interviewed either a family member of someone in their community about either their experiences of migrating to Birmingham or living in the city.
Projects like this are becoming more common in schools across Britain. Teachers such as Dan Lyndon-Cohen, Eliza West and Emily Toettcher have published fantastic practical guides, and through my work with the Migration Museum I have created resources to support teachers running similar projects. The Migration Museum will shortly be running their own Oral History project with a local secondary school. In this post, I want to explain why Oral History matters, and what it brings to the classroom.
Understanding History in the Classroom
In 1991, the Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher, personally intervened to try and influence the development of the National History Curriculum. It is hard to imagine a sitting Prime Minister engaging in the detail of curriculum design for any other subject. But history has always been different. Debates over statues, museums, memorials and history classrooms are proxy for debates about culture, heritage and identity.
The ‘new history’ consensus since the 1970s has sought to treat classroom history as akin to disciplinary history – as a form of critically distant social inquiry into the past. But in reality, school history will always serve another purpose. History helps us make sense of who we are now, and where we might be going. To put it simply, “Who we were” shapes not only “who we are” but “who we ought to be” and as a result “what we ought to do”.
Teaching history is especially challenging in multicultural countries like Britain. If the national story exclusively represents the majority, minority groups risk being ignored or made to feel invisible. In that instance, ‘who we are’ becomes a projection that leaves minorities either not recognised or misrecognised.
Multicultural nations face great difficulties here. If our story about ‘who we were’ does not represent minorities, neither will our account of ‘who we are’. This not only denies some pupils an important sense of belonging, it also can leave them feeling disempowered, stereotyped and marginalised. This is why organisations like the Migration Museum and the movement to diversify the history curriculum matter: piece by piece, they help us build a national story that is more inclusive.
Learning Through Stories
Oral history should be an important part of this mission for two reasons. Firstly, it makes students active rather than passive learners. They can come to see themselves as having a role to play in constructing the past – there is a power to this. Secondly, it encourages pupils to see themselves and their families as active participants in bigger historical narratives. In the work I have done, this was about inclusion within local history, but there is no reason why Oral History projects cannot seek to include pupils within national history.
For example, one pupil interviewed his mother who had moved to Birmingham from Jamaica. Reflecting on his interview, he wrote, “Birmingham is a mix of various people from different places. So coming from Birmigham is a home away from home, because we mix with a lot of local communities.” Another pupil – whose entire family had recently migrated from Pakistan – wrote that he better understood his family’s story as a result. One simply wrote that “we are proud of our identity”.
Stories like these should remind us that oral history has powerful inclusive potential. By democratising the construction of historical narratives, and crucially giving voice to disempowered groups, oral history can be an important part of a wider movement to diversify British history.
About the author James Lopez is a Postgraduate Student at UCL interested in studying the intersections between political theory and social memory. He previously taught History at an Inner-city School in East Birmingham, and has spent time creating teaching resources for the Migration Museum.
This blog was written during James’s Teach First Summer Project with the Migration Museum.
The Migration Museum received funding from The National Lottery Heritage Fund to support the development of a dispersed Migration Collection, in advance of our move to our permanent home in the City of London in 2028. Our Collections Researcher, Lucy May Maxwell, explains more about the work we’ve been doing with partner organisations to uncover migration stories within existing collections and develop a prototype for people to discover and explore migration stories across the UK.
Lucy May Maxwell, Collections Researcher at the Migration Museum, on a research trip to Leicester Museums. Image: Migration Museum
Earlier this year, as part of the collections research project, the Museum of Cardiff provided a list of migration-related objects that included a Jambiya, a Yemeni dagger, that they have on display. It was donated to the museum by Daoud Salaman. Reading the story of his parents running a cafe in Butetown around the Second World War, I remembered that the Imperial War Museum has a collection of photos of Butetown’s Muslim community at that time. I looked through the photos, and there were Ali and Olive Salaman in their cafe! It was the kind of moment we all get into museums for – the thrill of making connections and putting a face to the name.
This is one of many moments of connection that can leap out when looking at multiple museum collections through a thematic lens. Ali and Olive Salaman’s story would have fitted right into Migration Museum’s past exhibition Taking Care of Business: Migrant Entrepreneurs and the Making of Britain. While there are so many fantastic stories that the Museum has brought together in its previous themed exhibitions, this project gives us the chance to see how they connect to stories held by other museums and by bringing them together digitally, to show all of us a richer picture of Britain’s migration history.
Researching Together
In order to make this project possible, I have been working with volunteers, students and fee-paid researchers to explore the collections of partner museums and archives, as well as to audit past migration-related community heritage projects funded by The National Lottery Heritage Fund. The aim is to uncover migration stories held by other museums, and in turn share them with a wider audience by featuring them in our digital Migration Collection.
In early 2025, students from Goldsmiths, UCL, SOAS, University of Westminster and University of Greenwich researched more than 200 previous NLHF projects and identified both strong community organisations for whom the heritage project is still at the heart of what they do, and other projects that have slipped out of sight due to website redesigns or charity closings. In those cases, we used the Internet Archive to look at snapshots of heritage assets such as oral history interviews.
We are building a digital Migration Collection platform that could safeguard these interviews for the longer term and share them with new audiences. We have started working with digital agency Torchbox to build a prototype platform that will test out how we can rescue heritage assets at risk of being lost and how we can shine a spotlight on others that are held in museum collections.
Staff at all of the partner museums have been very helpful in guiding us towards migration stories that are either on display or in store. Visits to each partner have shown the true scale of the collections that small teams are managing on a daily basis. These large collections show how much potential there is in existing museum collections, but they also highlight the challenges that come with many thousands of objects — attention cannot be given to all of them. We are here to give that attention to migration-related objects, and in doing so bring their valuable stories to a bigger national audience.
Migration Network Events
As well as looking at how to share stories and objects digitally, I have also been thinking through what the Migration Museum could physically collect in the next 3 to 5 years. The museum has always put its audiences first, creating exhibitions in collaboration with artists, story contributors, historians and local communities. How can we make the process of collecting objects as democratic as the guiding principles of the museum?
To help with this question, we have held two Migration Network events focused on museums and their collections. The first event in May was held online and 100 attendees heard presentations from North East Museums on their Multaka project, the Wiener Holocaust Library on their newly digitised collections, and Global Link on their Migration Stories North West project. The speakers gave brilliant insights into how the best digital engagement products and co-produced digital exhibitions out there today centre people’s interests in collections work.
Lucy and Daria introducing the Migration Museum at a Migration Network Event co-hosted with National Museums Liverpool. Image: Migration MuseumThe Migration Museum team at a Migration Network Event, co-hosted with National Museums Liverpool. Image: Migration Museum
At the beginning of September, we co-hosted an in-person Migration Network event with National Museums Liverpool (NML). Thanks to the generosity of NML staff, everyone was given insights into the latest plans for the Waterfront Transformation, and partnership work at the Maritime Museum, International Slavery Museum, World Museum and Museum of Liverpool. As well as discussing the role of objects, there was also an emphasis on the need to create spaces where people feel welcome, and how the co-design of spaces can link historic stories to contemporary cultures. So far it has been a year of many rich conversations and discoveries. We’ll be sharing the results of all of this project work early in 2026. In the meantime, we’d love to hear from you — what would you like to see at the Migration Museum?
Thanks to The National Lottery Heritage Fund and National Lottery players for supporting this project.
Over the past 13 years, we’ve welcomed more than 30,000 students, with around a third from secondary schools. Our cross-curricular learning programme has made a significant impact, linking personal experiences of migration to the broader landscape of migration in the UK.
Recently, however, demand from geography teachers has grown for workshops that focus specifically on migration from a geographical perspective.
While our award-winning learning team already has a proven track record of engaging students across different themes and subjects through our cross-curricular approach, this new demand presents an exciting opportunity. That’s why we’re expanding our geography offer — developing tailored workshops and resources that bring the human side of migration to the forefront of geography learning.
“What is often missing in schools from the way geography is taught is the human side of migration. This is where the Migration Museum’s approach of personal stories can really add to the statistics and facts that geography leads with in schools. We humanise, bring empathy and contextualise migration, in a way that is often difficult to do in the classroom.” — Tia Shah, Learning Manager at Migration Museum
Tia Shah, Learning Manager, and Liberty Melly, Head of Learning, speaking at the Geographical Association Conference 2025, Photo: Migration Museum
To meet this demand, we’ve been actively building partnerships, creating gallery resources, and developing new workshops. Some of the steps we’ve taken so far include:
Developed a new workshop menu tailored to specific subjects — starting with a KS3 geography workshop and a KS4 interactive talk
Included more geography specific resources on our resource bank. (Just type “geography” in the search bar to find them.)
Spoke at the Geographical Association Conference, delivering both primary and secondary sessions
Delivered a CPD session as part of GeogLive! Watch the recording here
Developed more specific CPD and ITT for geography teachers
These initiatives are just the start. As we continue to develop our learning programme, we aim to provide teachers with a growing menu of engaging, discursive workshops across subjects, supporting teachers and learners by bringing migration to every classroom — all as we work towards the opening of our permanent museum in 2028.
Central to all of these workshops is our approach to teaching migration: humanising the topic and leading with personal stories and connections to migration. By bringing our unique learning pedagogy and tried-and-tested tools to different subjects like geography, we ensure that migration is taught in a sensitive, empathetic, and personal way, supporting students to explore migration as a source of connection rather than division.
“The case studies…It really brought the examples to life hearing from, not about, the migrants.” — Harris Federation teacher
“It will give me more confidence to try and draw connections more frequently in our learning, and also to aim to humanise stories where possible.” — Queen Elizabeth’s School teacher
We’re excited to continue developing workshops that bring the human stories of migration into geography classrooms, helping students engage with the topic in meaningful, empathetic ways.
Interested? Book a workshop or talk with Tia, our Learning Manager, by emailing tia@migrationmuseum.org
Top Image: Student engaging with migration story discs at the Migration Museum, Photo: Migration Museum
Our front of house team’s warmth, care and curiosity made the Migration Museum in Lewisham a place where people came back to again and again — sometimes just for a chat or a quiet moment on the community sofas, at other times to spend an hour or more exploring our exhibitions.
Whether supporting emotional conversations, offering sensory tools for neurodivergent visitors, or simply greeting everyone who walks through our doors with a smile, our team makes the Migration Museum a space where everyone can feel they belong.
Family pictured at the Migration Museum in 2024 (Photo: Elzbieta Piekacz)
This national award celebrates the very best in visitor experience, and we are honoured to be recognised for creating one of the most welcoming, inclusive, and engaging museum environments in the UK.
From teens dropping in after school, to community elders, long-time supporters, parents with toddlers, first-time museum-goers, and even those who may be unsure about their links to migration, we aim to make everyone who visits the Migration Museum feel welcome. That belief is at the heart of everything we do — and it’s wonderful to have it acknowledged on this scale.
A Front of House Welcome at the Migration Museum (Photo: Elzbieta Piekacz)
We were shortlisted in a prestigious field alongside Derby Museums Trust Visitor Experience Team | Museum of Making, Nothe Fort operated by Weymouth Civic Society Wanting to make a difference: Visitor Experience at Nothe Fort, Chatham Historic Dockyard Trust The Historic Dockyard Chatham and Young V&A Young V&A Front of House Team. Congratulations to all of our colleagues who were shortlisted in this category.
The award, decided by a panel of independent judges with extensive experience across the museums and heritage sector, was announced at a glittering ceremony at the Hilton Park Lane, London, known as the ‘Oscars of the Museum World’, on Thursday 15 May.
Frances Ewings and Amanda Swift receiving the Visitor Welcome Award at the Museums + Heritage Awards 2025 (Photo: Hayley Bray)
Frances Ewings, Front of House Gallery Supervisor, said: “Thank you to the judges and a huge thank you to our Migration Museum visitors that support us, whether you’ve visited us once or are our regular faces. We’re thrilled to have our front of house work recognised through this award”
“At the Migration Museum, we pride ourselves on being welcoming to everyone – and as we have until recently been located in a shopping centre in Lewisham, south-east London, this really does mean everyone! From curious shoppers to those who have travelled across the country to see our exhibitions, we strive to ensure our work is accessible to all.”
“As we look ahead to our move to a permanent home in the City of London, opening in 2028, we plan to take what we’ve built in Lewisham with us and show that welcoming and supporting visitors is a crucial part of their experience and what people take away from the museum.”
“We hope to be an example of how the Front of House work is as vital as exhibitions, learning and programming in order for visitors to truly experience a museum’s values.”
To all of you who have visited, shared your story, brought friends or family, left kind comments in our welcome book, or recommended us to a friend — thank you. This award is for you, too.
Volunteer Amanda Swift leading a Stories in Focus mini-tour (Photo: Elzbieta Piekacz)
