After a fantastic two and a half years, our Migration Museum at The Workshop is now closed to the public.

As we gear up for a move to an exciting new venue in 2020 – more details coming soon – we wanted to look back at some of the highlights of our time on Lambeth High Street.

Being based at The Workshop since April 2017 has been transformative for us as an organisation, providing us with a venue of our own for the very first time. We have staged a dynamic series of exhibitions, events, and education and group workshops, and significantly grown our audience, profile and partnerships, testing ideas, gathering feedback and providing a showcase for the permanent Migration Museum for Britain that we are working to create.

During our time at The Workshop, we:

Welcomed over 32,000 visitors from across London, the UK and beyond.

Staged three major exhibitions:

Call Me By My Name: Stories from Calais and Beyond, a multimedia exhibition exploring the complexity and human stories behind the current migration crisis, with a particular focus on the now demolished Calais camp.

No Turning Back: Seven Migration Moments that Changed Britain, an acclaimed exhibition exploring seven migration moments throughout history that changed Britain through art, photography, graphics, quotes and stories.

Room to Breathe, an immersive exhibition inviting visitors to discover personal stories from generations of new arrivals to Britain by journeying through a series of interactive rooms in which the struggles, joys, creativity and resilience of living in a new land are brought to life through audio, films, photographs and personal objects.

The exhibition included an art studio, curated by visual artist and educator Dima Karout, which hosted a different migrant artist in residence each month who made the studio their own, creating art and sharing their work and process with visitors in real time. This programme culminated in Borderless, a group show curated by Dima Karout and featuring all of the artists who had taken up residency in the art studio during the exhibition run.

Hosted a regularly changing series of pop-up and temporary exhibitions, including:
The New Londoners, a series of family portraits by Magnum photographer Chris Steele-Perkins documenting London’s unique cultural richness
Caribbean Takeaway Takeover, an interactive pop-up art and sound installation showcasing the stories of Windrush generation elders by artist EVEWRIGHT
Nowhere People UK, a selection of works by UN documentary photographer Greg Constantine, commissioned and presented by UNHCR, exploring the impact of statelessness on individuals in the UK
A Mile in My Shoes – Migration, an immersive experience by the Empathy Museum housed in a giant shoebox inviting visitors to walk a mile in the shoes – literally – of refugees and migrants who have made London home while listening to their story.

Held over 100 events, ranging from cookery classes to stand-up comedy nights, theatre performances to themed lates, sports tournament receptions and conversations with business leaders to our first ever Family History Day.

Welcomed more than 5,000 primary and secondary school students, who took part in facilitated workshops and activities run by our learning team focused on the themes explored in our exhibitions and within relevant parts of the curriculum.

Hosted more than 2,000 facilitated group visitors, ranging from community groups for older people to young refugees and asylum seekers, corporates and charities to government departments.

Taken our activities out beyond the walls of the musuem into the local area through walking tours, sports tournaments, talks at schools, colleges and libraries and more.

Thank you to everyone who visited us at The Workshop and to all of our contributors, funders and supporters.

We look forward to welcoming you to Lewisham in 2020!