We’re thrilled to have won the People’s Choice award at the Cultural Enterprises Awards 2023 for our Migrant Makers Market, our concept store and makerspace providing a platform for a unique range of amazing products made by migrant-led businesses and creators.
Our Migrant Makers Market accompanies our Taking Care of Business: Migrant Entrepreneurs and the Making of Britain exhibition and provides a much-needed platform for underrepresented makers, brands and businesses that otherwise aren’t available in high street spaces. Take a closer look and among the products you will discover the stories of the entrepreneurs behind them.
The Migrant Makers Market also features a Makerspace, where we host regular workshops and masterclasses run by the artists and makers whose products we platform, ranging from jewellery and ear-cuff making to coffee masterclasses and hot-sauce tasting.
Katy Clinch, Retail Manager at the Migration Museum, said: “It’s a huge honour to accept this award on behalf of everyone at the Migration Museum and the brilliant makers we work with on the Migrant Makers Market. Creating the range was an absolute team effort. Special thanks goes to a fantastic team of volunteers who spent hours on product research. But this award really belongs to the makers and businesses who’ve worked so hard to design and make these incredible products. It is wonderful to have their effort and talent recognised with this award. There’s never been a more important time for us to acknowledge the incredible ways that migrants shape this country – and our lives.”
Our Migrant Makers Market was designed by Lewisham-based spatial designer Studio Lucy Sanderson, chosen to create the space following an open call to local artists and designers.
“The Migrant Makers Market’s spatial design is influenced by the design language of UK high streets, markets, and shopping centres, as well as the borough of Lewisham’s blue and yellow brand identity honouring its home in the heart of Lewisham. The design pays homage to iconic brands, many of which were created by immigrants, while celebrating and providing a platform for future migrant-founded brands and businesses.” – Lucy Sanderson, founder of Studio Lucy Sanderson and designer of the Migrant Makers Market.
You can explore our award-winning Migrant Makers Market by visiting us in-store or online.
Congratulations to everyone who was shortlisted for these awards and to all of the other winners – it was inspiring to see so many incredible ranges and so much creativity on display. View the full list of award winners here.
Top image: Katy Clinch, Retail Manager at the Migration Museum, accepting the People’s Choice Award for our Migrant Makers Market at the Cultural Enterprises Awards 2023 (Credit: Association for Cultural Enterprises)
After a 10-year journey, the Migration Museum is delighted to announce that it has been given the green light for a permanent home in the City of London.
The City of London’s planning applications sub-committee approved plans today (Tuesday 21 February 2023) for a new development at 65 Crutched Friars, which will provide a state-of-the-art permanent home for the Migration Museum on the bottom three floors of a new student accommodation development, in partnership with real estate company Dominus.
The new venue, a stone’s throw from Fenchurch Street, Aldgate and the Tower of London, will provide a permanent home for a Migration Museum for Britain exploring how the movement of people to and from these shores has shaped who we all are – as individuals, as communities, and as nations.
The new museum will encompass interactive temporary and permanent exhibition galleries, flexible event and education space, outdoor areas for programming and activation and a cafe/restaurant and shop that will be a core part of the museum’s offer, showcasing the significant impact of migration on food and business.
The permanent Migration Museum in the City of London will be allied to a network of venues across the UK providing a platform for people to explore and share migration stories and our connections to each other.
The Migration Museum is currently based in a temporary venue in the heart of Lewisham Shopping Centre in south-east London, where it welcomes around 7,000 visitors a month to its acclaimed exhibitions, events and learning programmes. With the support of Landsec, which owns and manages Lewisham Shopping Centre, we hope to remain in Lewisham until at least 2025-26.
Sophie Henderson, CEO of the Migration Museum, says:
“We are delighted to have secured this opportunity for a permanent home for the Migration Museum. We are creating Britain’s missing museum, exploring how the movement of people to and from the City, London and the UK has shaped who we are – as individuals, as communities and as nations.
“Now more than ever, we need an inspiring space for diverse audiences from across London and beyond to come together to explore, discuss and reflect on key questions around migration, identity and belonging. And there is no more fitting location for the Migration Museum than in the heart of the City of London, Britain’s gateway to the world for thousands of years.
Being based in the City will give us the opportunity to reach and engage audiences from across London, the UK and beyond on a significantly larger scale, while staying true to our ethos and the approaches that are so important to us, with personal storytelling at the core of everything we do.
“Our temporary venue in Lewisham has been a space of real development and reflection for us. We have been welcomed by local communities with open arms, and remain hugely committed to continuing our work within the borough. We hope to remain in Lewisham for at least another two years, and invite the diverse audiences, communities, artists and creatives that we are so proud to serve and co-create our museum with to come with us on this exciting next stage of our journey.”
Henderson added that Dominus was a fitting partner for the Migration Museum in this groundbreaking new development, which presents by far the most viable opportunity to create a permanent Migration Museum for Britain in the charity’s 10-year search for a permanent home.
Dominus’ founder, Sukhpal Singh Ahluwalia, arrived in the UK as a refugee fleeing Idi Amin’s Uganda, and the family are personally committed to the Migration Museum and the stories that we provide a platform for.
“We are immensely grateful to everyone who has helped us to reach this stage, and to Dominus’ belief in the importance of our museum and the support they are providing in helping us to make it a reality. We look forward to continuing to work closely in partnership with them to help to make our vision for a permanent Migration Museum for Britain a reality.”
We will be sharing more details about our capital fundraising campaign to support the move to our permanent home in due course.
In the meantime, we wanted to say a massive thank you to everyone who has helped and supported us over the past 10 years to reach this stage – we really, really couldn’t have got here without you! We look forward to inviting you all to join us on this exciting next phase of our development.
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.
Hundreds of young people teamed up to submit over 50 cretive ideas. We shortlisted six entries and matched each with creative professionals to develop these ideas into prototypes, which we displayed outside the entrance to the Migration Museum for a week in December.
On December 6, we hosted a fantastic finals event, at which six shortlisted teams presented their ideas to a panel of high-profile judges. All were truly worthy winners but, after much deliberation, the judges chose Material Memories, a mixed-media display of family objects, artwork, audio and poetry exploring her Palestinian heritage by 10-year-old Muna.
Muna presenting at the finals event for Moving Stories: Lewisham at the Migration Museum on 6 December 2022 (Image: Elzbieta Piekacz)
Muna is now working with our creative team to develop a full exhibit. This will be displayed in our windows from February 15 2023, alongside all of the finalists’ prototypes.
We are looking to relaunch our Moving Stories creative competition for young people next year – more details to follow.
If you’d like to find out more or are keen to run your own competition, please contact our Learning Manager Liberty Melly: liberty@migrationmuseum.org.
In the meantime you can explore the resources we put together to help guide young people and educators entering last year’s competition:
