From 2020 until 2025, the Migration Museum transformed a former retail unit in the heart of a busy shopping centre in Lewisham, south-east London, into an award-winning cultural, community and retail venue. 

The Migration Museum in Lewisham Shopping Centre broke down barriers to access to arts and culture. In our five years in Lewisham, we welcomed over 200,000 visitors into our space, encompassing diverse local audiences and destination visitors from across London and beyond. 

We were privileged to be welcomed into the heart of a thriving local community, with our approach, programming and spatial design co-created by members of our Lewisham community through our People’s Panel and Community Curators programmes.

Our visitors in Lewisham were younger, much more ethnically diverse and much more representative of London’s population than other London museums and galleries:

– 56% of our visitors identified as being from a non-white/Global Majority ethnic background, significantly higher than the 19% average for London museums and heritage sites, according to Audience Agency data.

– 41% were from groups that the Audience Agency classifies as “low arts engaged”, representative of these groups’ share of London’s population and compared with just 15% of overall visitors to London museums and galleries.

A welcoming space, with something for everyone

We created a welcoming, porous space that was free to enter, attracting the attention of passers’ by via the installation of two sections of the Berlin Wall loaned to us by the artist STIK, positioned in the heart of the shopping centre’s Central Square, and via a series of regularly changing window displays – a showcase for local talent. 

At the front of our museum, we created a dedicated community space, the venue for community exhibitions curated by our Community Curators and featuring work by artists with a connection to Lewisham. We also transformed the front of our museum into our Migrant Makers Market, our award winning concept shop providing a platform for a unique range of amazing products made by migrant-led businesses and creators, as well as the makers’ personal migration stories. 

Visitors could then move into our main gallery spaces and explore our regularly changing programme of acclaimed, story-led temporary exhibitions, each developed with hundreds of contributors and storytellers, including All Our Stories: Migration and the Making of Britain, Heart of the Nation: Migration and the Making of the NHS, Taking Care of Business: Migrant Entrepreneurs and the Making of Britain; Departures: 400 Years of Emigration from Britain and Room to Breathe. 

Underpinning our approach was a commitment to ensuring that we welcomed everyone who walked through our doors with understanding and openness, letting visitors know that the Migration Museum really is a space for everyone. Our approach in Lewisham was recognised by our peers – we won the Visitor Welcome Award at the Museums + Heritage Awards 2025 and were shortlisted for Best Visitor Welcome at the Cultural Enterprises Awards.

Strong demand for our award-winning learning offer

Our award-winning learning team engaged over 17,500 students from Lewisham and across London, the UK and beyond, through facilitated and self-guided visits – including groups from as far afield as Wales, Coventry and Glasgow, to the Philippines, the US and across Europe.

We created a dedicated learning space where we facilitated workshops for students to bring learning around the topic of migration to life, build critical-thinking skills, and engage in informed conversations around migration. Our learning space featured an interactive timeline and map that encouraged learners to explore the long history of migration to and from Britain across the ages – and the many resonances between the past and present.

Demand for our learning programme far exceeded our capacity to deliver, with many teachers and lecturers bringing their students back for regular repeat visits. 81% of students said that they had a better understanding of migration after participating in museum activities. Feedback also showed that 100% of teachers were satisfied with the content and relevance of the workshops.

A vibrant and varied events programme

Events were a core part of our offer in Lewisham, ranging from drop-in workshops, performances and after-school activities to day-long festival events exploring themes ranging from food to fashion to family history. 

Our festival events attracted thousands of visitors from across London and beyond, three-quarters of whom visited us specifically to attend our events. Highlights included:

-Around the Table, a day-long event exploring migration and food featuring a fermentation workshop, intergenerational recipe sharing activities, food pop-ups and a panel discussion.
-Routes and Roots, a family history event in partnership with The National Archives and featuring local and national archival partners, including practical advice, creative workshops and a talk by African-Caribbean genealogy expert Paul Crooks.
-Ugandan Asians: A Living History, an event programmed by community group Ugandan Asians – A Living History commemorating the 50th anniversary of the expulsion of the Asian community from Uganda, featuring dance workshops, author readings, film screenings and spoken word, as well as a henna hand-painting workshop and family art activities.
-Windrush 75: Legacies, a day-long festival to commemorate the 75th anniversary of Windrush, featuring music, performance, storytelling, interactive talks and more. 
-Who Runs the World?, an event during Women’s History Month featuring book readings, fabric memories workshops and a food pop-up run by Mystic Borek founder Spasia Dinkovski.

Our popular Family Fun Days attracted thousands of predominantly local visitors to take part in a wide range of free, fun creative activities for the whole family.

Our Migrant Makers ran drop-in and bookable creative workshops, encompassing a wide range of crafts, ranging from nail art to wood carving to Carnival ear-cuff making.

We hosted a series of popular evening events, including comedy nights, exhibition lates and Refugee Week celebrations.

We also provided use of our event space to hundreds of community groups during our time in Lewisham, with community events ranging from meetings to public events to performances.

Building pride, delivering value and impact

The Migration Museum in Lewisham brought people together, built pride in the local area, while delivering value and impact to the local economy.

94% of our visitors in Lewisham rated the Migration Museum ‘very good’ or ‘good’ for building pride in the local area, and 94% rated it ‘as a place for the whole community’

More than half of our visitors came from outside the borough of Lewisham to visit our museum, while more than half of our exhibition visitors and 77% of our event visitors were destination visitors, visiting the shopping centre and the museum specifically to attend one of our events.

Our museum in Lewisham delivered a total annual economic impact of £2.1m (Source: Association for Independent Museums Economic Impact Toolkit).

Lifelong friendships and lasting legacies

Most importantly we made lasting friendships and connections. We hope to weave the spirit of our temporary home in Lewisham into the fabric of our new permanent home in the City of London, and that our legacy lives on in Lewisham for future generations. 

Our People’s Panel and People’s Network co-produced our core community engagement values, helping to shape our museum’s values, objectives and activities not only in Lewisham, but moving forward.

Our Community Curators built such a strong connection during their time with us that they’ve continued to work together, most recently via a residency at Goldsmiths’ Centre for Contemporary Arts. 

We are ensuring that Lewisham voices are embedded in our future planning through the recruitment of our new People’s Panel, bringing together community-minded individuals from Lewisham with peers from the City of London and Tower Hamlets to help shape key aspects of our new permanent home.

Thank you, Lewisham! 

We’d like to extend a huge, whole-hearted thank you to everyone who visited us in Lewisham, chatted to our team, explored our exhibitions, took part in a workshop or activity, contributed a story, recommended us to friends and family and supported our work during our five amazing years in the borough. 

We couldn’t have done it without you – and we hope you’ll come with us on the next stages of our journey.

Finally, we are grateful to Landsec for enabling us to host our museum in such a brilliant venue in the heart of Lewisham for five years.