The Migration Museum traces movement and its impact across the decades

Soon the Migration Museum will bid farewell to its home of the past five years in Lewisham Shopping Centre to relocate in central London.

Over the years the museum has become entwined with Lewisham’s community, incorporating schools, youth groups, organisations and locals into its work and offering a space for residents to meet and spend their time.  

The Migration Museum will move to Square Mile in 2027, but before then, its South London base has some exciting events left up its sleeve.

As its name would suggest, the Migration Museum explores how the movement of people to and from the UK across the ages has shaped individuals, as communities, and nations. 

Migration often hits the headlines and sparks heated political and online debates. But there’s an underlying story of comings and goings which stretches back many centuries.

Running until December 20, All Our Stories – Migration and the Making of Britain, will be hosted within the shopping centre.

The exhibition brings together the Migration Museum’s work over the past decade, alongside new stories and artwork that show how migration has shaped landscapes, cities, diets, fashions, language, culture, ideas and beliefs. 

All Our Stories will feature Chart of Shame, a collection of National newspaper front pages on immigration, divided into months, by former Times Journalist  Liz Gerard.

Ms Gerard said: “After 40 years in newspapers, I started a blog about print journalism in 2012. 

“It involved collecting all the national front pages. Seeing them all on screen gave a surprisingly different perspective from flicking through them physically day by day. Patterns became more noticeable and I soon became aware of how much emphasis was placed on immigration.”

In 2016, Ms Gerard began Chart of Shame, a bar chart of front pages.

She said: “In 2013, immigration provided a national newspaper lead story on 93 occasions. I thought that would be a peak, but I couldn’t have been more wrong: the 2016 chart had 287 front pages.

“The version you see here divides these front pages into months, which highlights how coverage accelerated in the run-up to the EU referendum. 

“Very little of the reportage was welcoming, or even understanding. Very little effort was made to examine the subject impartially. 

“It is easier to blame ‘the other’ than ourselves for all that is wrong with our society. And it shames my trade.”

A large selection of photography is also on display, including Paul Trevor’s image of the Bangladesh Youth Front in Curtain Road, Shoreditch, in August 1978 at the Day of Action protest organised by Hackney & Tower Hamlets Defence Committee and Anti-Nazi League.

Elsewhere in the exhibition, you will find a reimagined airport departure lounge created by Jiro Osuga, a dress made by Karen Arthur who uses fashion as a form of activism, as well as installations, drawings, music and film.

All Our Stories is not an attempt to tell the whole story of migration to and from Britain – but an effort to encourage reflection, start conversations and gather ideas ahead of its own move in two years’ time.

Also running throughout November until December 19, the Migration Museum is hosting a community curated exhibition, Inside/Outside and All In Between.

This showcase explores the internal identity of migrants and the external realities of settlement and integration they face.

Inside/Outside And All In Between features responses by artists working across diverse mediums, including film, photography, poetry, painting, collage and more. All of the works in the exhibition were submitted via an open call-out inviting artists with a strong connection to Lewisham to respond to the exhibition themes.

The museum’s community curators received more than 130 submissions, of which they selected 22 to feature in the initial staging of the exhibition. 

A second season of the exhibition will be staged in Spring 2025, featuring more of the selected artworks.

Pictured top: The Bangladesh Youth Front in Curtain Road, August 20, 1978 (Picture: Paul Trevor, Courtesy of Four Corners and Swadhinata Trust)