Our Public Engagement Coordinator Frances Ewings at an engagement event at Barts Hospital (Photo: Migration Museum)
As we prepare to open our new permanent home in the City of London, Frances Ewings, our Public Engagement Coordinator, explains why the Square Mile is such a fitting location for the Migration Museum – and how we’ve been engaging with our new local communities.
“Isn’t it just full of finance bros?” This is just one of the surprised responses we’ve heard when telling people that the Migration Museum is building a permanent venue in the City of London. When it launches in 2028, it will be the UK’s only museum solely dedicated to the topic of migration – but why build a cultural venue examining the UK’s diverse past in the heart of a landscape famed for suits and skyscrapers?
Look a little closer at London’s history and perhaps the location isn’t so surprising. After all, the City is where Roman settlers founded Londinium, which became the London we know today – in fact, sections of the original wall they built around the city can be found just metres from the museum’s new site. City street names also give a clue to a not-so homogenous past – Lombard Street, Old Jewry and India Street to name a few.
The City’s diversity doesn’t just lie in the history books. According to the last census, the Square Mile is home to around 8,600 residents – over a third of whom identified with a non-UK identity. Add to this one of the most international workforces in the world: 40 percent of the 678,000 workforce populating the City by day come from the European Economic Area (EEA)*, or the rest of the world.
Through our community engagement work at our previous venues in Lambeth and Lewisham, which saw co-produced exhibitions and an award-winning welcome, we understand the important role a museum can play in the local area. Reflecting the migration links of the area surrounding our new home is integral to the success of the new museum.
Migration Museum story discs contributed by visitors and participants (Photo: Migration Museum)
With this in mind, we set about work early. In 2024 we secured funding from City Bridge Foundation to support our community engagement. This has enabled us to go out and meet communities where they are – an important step in removing barriers to cultural participation.
A huge part of this work has been our story collection project, whereby we have visited community centres, charities, places of worship, hospitals, libraries and corporate employee resource groups to unearth 5,000 hidden – or not so hidden – stories of migration.
Highlights have included hosting an outreach workshop with an ESOL class at the Guild Church of St Katharine Cree. The church focuses on serving City workers in essential, but often precarious and low paid jobs – so-called ‘hidden’ roles – and is home to the Joseph Centre for Dignified Work.
Migration Museum outreach session with an ESOL class at St Katherine Cree (Photo: Migration Museum)
The majority of the class we met were Latin American and part of cleaning, maintenance and security personnel in the City. We shared stories and exhibits from past Migration Museum exhibitions, and they shared their first-hand experiences of immigration – giving voice to those often overlooked and proving that there’s more to the City than just red-braced bankers.
We have also enjoyed meeting hyper-local audiences at the Community Table held at the Aldgate Centre – a mere four-minute walk from our permanent site. Run by the charity Shoreditch Trust, whose aims include strengthening community and inclusion in the City, the Community Table is a chance for locals from all walks of life to enjoy a meal together. A diverse group, we met City residents with migration stories from across the globe.
Migration Museum outreach session at Community Table at the Aldgate Centre (Photo: Migration Museum)
City Bridge funding has also made possible the formation of our People’s Panel – a group of over 50 community-minded individuals who, through collaboration and consultation, will help shape key aspects of our new museum.
We’ve attended iconic venues such as St Paul’s Cathedral, where we met members of the City’s other international cohort – tourists. They are an important part of the City economy and will be a valued audience at our permanent museum. Through our recent outreach work we have witnessed tourists’ appetite for UK emigration history too. Many, particularly North American, have expressed interest in their family’s UK-roots. We are, after all, a museum dedicated to migration – both emigration from and immigration to the UK.
Migration Museum outreach session at St Paul’s Cathedral (Photo: Migration Museum)
We look forward to building on these relationships, forging new ones and finally welcoming all when we open our museum doors in 2028.
If you are part of a community group in London and are interested in the Migration Museum’s free outreach workshops, contact info@migrationmuseum.org for more.
*The EEA includes EU countries and also Iceland, Liechtenstein and Norway
Our community engagement work is supported by City Bridge Foundation, the funding arm of The City of London Corporation’s charity, Bridge House Estates (1035628)
We are excited to be part of Backyard Biennial: East, a free, summer arts festival initiated by Whitechapel Gallery in collaboration with more than 40 local partners across East London.
We are running three free activities during the festival. See below for more information and how to book your place:
Wearing Our Stories: Stitching Identity Through Football
Ahead of the Men’s World Cup final, the Migration Museum will be hosting artist Nicole Chui to lead a participatory workshop exploring football, migration, race, and belonging as part of Backyard Biennial: East at the Whitechapel Gallery.
Drawing on her practice engaging football culture, fashion, ESEA identity, and protest, Chui will guide participants in stitching onto football shirts – weaving in personal journeys of migration. Whilst stitching, we will hold an open conversation about national identity, and what it means to feel at home – on and off the pitch. Participants will be able to take their shirts home and wear them with pride!
Join the Migration Museum team for a walking tour as part of Backyard Biennial and journey with us through the streets of Whitechapel and the East End to discover the lives of people from around the world who have shaped the area. From silk weavers to civil rights activists and market traders, we will walk in the footsteps of countless generations of people who forged lives for themselves, and in doing so, shaped our lives and the East End that we know and love today.
The tour will start and finish at Whitechapel Gallery and will last approximately 1 hour.
Wednesday 15 July – Sunday 6 September Venue: Whitechapel Gallery, 77-82 Whitechapel High Street, London E1 7QX Free – no booking
Do you have a migration story you’d like to share?
Visit our story disc display at the Whitechapel Gallery as part of Backyard Biennial: East and add your story to the Migration Museum’s growing collection of over 10,000 stories.
The Migration Museum wouldn’t exist without people’s stories. This display represents just a few of the thousands of personal migration stories shared with us by visitors over the years.
Your contributions will add to our growing collection ahead of the Migration Museum’s permanent home opening on Crutched Friars, just a 10-minute walk from Whitechapel Gallery, in 2028.
Backyard Biennial: East is an 8-week, free, summer arts festival initiated by Whitechapel Gallery in collaboration with more than 40 local partners across East London.
Titled East and featuring exhibitions, installations, screenings, performances, workshops, residencies, walks, open studios and special events, this first iteration of Backyard Biennial will celebrate the unique historic, cultural and creative identity of the East End, and pay tribute to its many diverse communities and industries.
The Migration Museum is proud to have partnered with the Hay Festival to bring you the personal migration stories of some of the brilliant speakers at this year’s celebration of literature, arts and culture.
We invited speakers at the festival to share their migration stories in the form of short videos and handwritten story discs.
We are honoured to share these stories with you below – click on the images to watch the videos (the links open in Instagram).
This year’s George Alagiah Memorial Lecture at the Festival, delivered by our Trustee, Professor David Olusoga OBE, was also in support of us – see below for more details and to watch the lecture.
We are truly grateful to the Alagiah Family, to the team at Hay, and to all of the speakers who shared their migration stories with us.
Julia Gillard
Former Prime Minister of Australia
“My family are not singers. We used to joke that we were the only non-singing Welsh on the planet. My father continued to follow Wales in the rugby, and he definitely wanted us to understand Wales’ literary traditions.”
Hear from Julia Gillard, former Prime Minister of Australia, as she shares her family’s story of emigrating from Barry in south Wales to Adelaide, South Australia, in 1966. Her family arrived as one of the many ‘Ten Pound Poms’ – a scheme that offered subsidised passage to Australia for over a million British citizens.
David Miliband
President of the International Rescue Committee and former UK Foreign Secretary
“I think that your parents always shape you. Philip Larkin said they f*** you up, whatever. My parents didn’t f*** me up. They provided an incredibly secure and loving home for my brother and I.”
Hear from David Miliband, President of the International Rescue Committee and former UK Foreign Secretary, as he shares how his parents came to the UK as Jewish refugees fleeing Nazi persecution – his dad from Belgium and his mum from Poland – and reflects on how stories like theirs have always been part of British history.
Kamila Shamsie
Author
“A lot of people often talk about home as though it is a single place and you’re expected to have one answer or to feel conflicted.”
Hear from award-winning Pakistani and British novelist Kamila Shamsie as she shares her story of moving from Pakistan to the UK through a specialist visa category for writers that no longer exists – and of following in the footsteps of her mother and grandfather, who both went to school in England.
Liv Little
Author, creative director and broadcaster
“Without their love story, I wouldn’t be here, so thank you mum for smoking all of dad’s cigarettes at the house party – it’s great.”
Hear from author, creative director and broadcaster Liv Little as she shares the story of how her Jamaican-born dad met her mum at a house party one summer’s evening in London – and fell madly in love.
Tahmima Anam
Author
“He was never expected to leave that village. No one in his family had ever left the village. But when he was a teenager, he was given a scholarship and he was able to leave the village and travel to Calcutta, which was the nearest big city.”
Hear from Bangladeshi-born British writer, novelist and columnist Tahmima Anam, as she shares her family’s incredible transnational migration story – from a small village in Muslim Bengal, to Kolkata, Bangladesh, Paris, and finally, London.
Kirsty Lang
Journalist and broadcaster
“My grandfather was born in Calcutta, and that’s because my great-grandfather, also Scottish, was working for the Indian civil service.”
Hear from BBC journalist Kirsty Lang as she shares her family’s deep connections to the British Empire, and a story of emigration that stretches from Scotland and India all the way to Australia.
The George Alagiah Memorial Lecture – in support of the Migration Museum
This year’s George Alagiah Memorial Lecture at the Hay Festival was in support of the Migration Museum.
George Alagiah OBE was a passionate supporter, a remarkable trustee and a true friend and champion of the Migration Museum – and this annual lecture celebrates the issues central to his work: migration, the power of the global majority and questions of representation.
The lecture was delivered by Migration Museum Trustee Professor David Olusoga, who discussed the history and legacy of the British Empire and how colonial nostalgia is shaping contemporary geopolitics, with journalist and broadcaster Kirsty Lang. The lecture was introduced by Aditi Anand, our Artistic Director.
Please note: the above link requires a Vimeo account to watch. You can sign up for free if you don’t yet have one.
Image credits: Stills from collaborative reels recorded by the Migration Museum at the Hay Festival (Credits: Migration Museum) Professor David Olusoga OBE delivers the George Alagiah Memorial Lecture in support of the Migration Museum at the Hay Festival (Credit: Adam Tatton-Reid and Hay Festival)
We are delighted to announce the launch of our new Teaching Migration History Toolkit, co-produced with the British Library.
What is the toolkit?
Developed with the help of teachers, this toolkit combines practical tips from the Migration Museum’s expert learning team with primary source examples from the British Library to offer a practical guide to teaching about migration in your classroom.
Use this toolkit to discover how you can use historical sources to teach migration history sensitively and with confidence, how personal stories can bring the subject to life, and how to navigate a subject that is heavily politicised by society.
Who is it for?
While this toolkit has been primarily designed for and with teachers, we hope that it’s a useful resource for anyone who wants to engage meaningfully with this subject.
We hope that it will inspire greater exploration of migration themes in classrooms, learning settings and beyond across the UK.
How was it created?
This toolkit is the result of a two-year partnership between the Migration Migration and the British Library’s learning teams. During this time we realised that it isn’t enough to just create migration history resources; we need to equip teachers with the skills to have conversations about migration and to navigate this complex topic.
How to use the toolkit
There are countless positive and uplifting stories of migrants’ contributions to Britain, which we encourage you to use in your classroom. But we’ve focused here on the most challenging aspects of teaching migration, identifying six topics, in response to teachers’ feedback:
Championing lived experience
Facilitating difficult conversations
Navigating the politics
Language and terminology
Dealing with racist language and imagery
Challenging myths, narratives and stereotypes
Each section uses a combination of primary source materials and top tips from the Migration Museum to offer guidance on how to deal with these challenging aspects of teaching migration history.
Download and explore the toolkit and related resources
To accompany the toolkit, we’ve also produced a terminology resource, defining some of the key language you will be using when teaching about migration and related topics, with explanations and guidance as to why certain terms are preferable over others.
The British Library have also collated a range of accompanying resources on Padlet, including animations, timelines and more primary sources.
