Welcome back to the Migration Museum

The Migration Museum is back open in the heart of Lewisham Shopping Centre. We’re currently displaying WALL, directly painted onto two separate surviving segments of the Berlin Wall by contemporary artists STIK and Thierry Noir, outside the entrance to our museum. Our major exhibition is Departures, exploring 400 years of emigration from Britain from the Mayflower to the present day. Also on display is Humanæ, a participatory project by artist Angélica Dass documenting every human skin tone through portrait photographs.

STIK has made a video for us to celebrate our reopening, featuring spectacular drone footage of WALL and our current exhibitions:

Video by STIK, featuring WALL by STIK and Thierry Noir, Departures, and Humanæ by Angélica Dass.

Audio

Oxford Education Podcast – Migration: Enrich Your KS3 History Curriculum
Aaron Wilkes and Shalina Patel discuss how effective teaching of migration can enrich your Key Stage 3 curriculum, with insights from Liberty Melly and Tia Shah from the learning team at the Migration Museum. What do students gain from studying migration at KS3? How has historical scholarship on migration changed in recent years? What is the impact of new research on how we should teach the topic? Read more
Departures podcast: 400 years of emigration from Britain
Departures is a new podcast from the Migration Museum exploring 400 years of emigration from Britain. Read more
Annual Lecture 2024 – Sunder Katwala asks: ‘Does the history of migration shape its future?’
For our 2024 Annual Lecture, Sunder Katwala, Director of the thinktank British Future, asked us to consider: if we engage and educate people about the history of immigration, how much can we hope or expect to change how we talk and think about its future? Listen and read the full transcript of Sunder’s lecture. Read more

Video

Jewish Museum Object Talk – Dunera
Our Head of Learning and Partnerships Emily Miller introduces the Dunera display from our Departures exhibition, as part of the Jewish Museum’s Passover Object Series of talks. Read more
Moving Stories: Lewisham – a creative competition for young people aged 9-18
Over the past year, young people from across Lewisham have been designing exhibits responding to what migration means to them as part of Moving Stories: Lewisham, a creative competition we ran during Borough of Culture, supported by Landsec. This video tells the story of the competition, featuring interviews with the six shortlisted teams and footage of the finals event. Read more
Lewisham: About Face by EVEWRIGHT – audio and video
“This installation is my own unique perspective on growing up in Lewisham as the child of parents from the Windrush generation, reflecting on the places and the forgotten heroes of Lewisham’s past and present that have shaped my life. In the audio clips below, I share my memories of family and growing up in Lewisham, my… Read more

Publications

Migration and Museums – a review for the Migration Network 2020/21
The Migration Museum commissioned a review to provide an overview of migration-related work being undertaken by museums and heritage sites nationally, to explore some of the motivations for the museum sector to address migration and the challenges faced in doing so, and to provide an initial basis and context for participants in the Migration Network 2020/21 to explore further. Read more
Signposting to refugee and asylum seeker support organisations in London
A downloadable guide featuring a selection of organisations supporting refugees and asylum seekers in London. Read more
Exploring how migration changes the places where we live
Migration has a major impact on local communities. In a series of videos produced as part of Migration Making Places, Making People: New Narratives of Inclusion, a partnership project between COMPAS, The Open University, the Migration Museum Project and Counterpoints Arts, key policymakers, researchers and practitioners discuss issues ranging from solidarity to challenges migrants face and… Read more