An example of the new intervention (green board in the middle of the photo) added to the original exhibition panel on Industrial Revolution and slavery.
Last month, the People's History Museum (PHM) launched its latest project, Migration: a human story. This project was led by the Community Programme team, made up of 5 community curators from different backgrounds whose lives have all been shaped by migration. While the project was delayed due to the pandemic, the team closely worked with the museum staff online to develop the ideas and exhibition presented through interventions, animations, and a banner.
Migration plays a crucial part in the history of Britain, especially with the refugee crisis in recent years, but there is no representation of modern and contemporary migration stories at PHM. To address this gap, the museum launched the Migration project series to present the stories of the people whose lives have been shaped by migration, touching on the reasons behind different migration experiences relating to age, class, gender, race, sexuality and immigration status.
As mentioned above, this project was led by the Community Programme team, who aimed to challenge the migration narratives presented by the PHM and respond to the absence by bringing in their personal migration stories through a series of interventions. It is mainly divided into three themes showing the stories and narratives of economic migrants (green intervention board), asylum seekers (blue intervention board) and refugees (purple intervention board). With exposure to the diverse experience of migrants in the past and present, and its linkage to Britain's history, political and democratic development, the project challenges the audience's understanding and thoughts towards migration.
Apart from challenging the public's perspectives on migration, this project also illustrates a good practice of community participation and engagement by recruiting and including community curators during the project. As a community-led project, the curators were given the power to decide on the topics they wanted to work on with research support from the museum staff. A lot of consultation, discussion, and meetings were carried out during the project to ensure that everyone was satisfied with the development and representation of the interventions while also echoing the PHM's central values and ideas.
Moreover, in order to emphasise the authenticity of the migration experiences, the quoted personal stories are kept the same way as they were written by the community curators without changing their words to guarantee their stories, thoughts and voices are their own.
Apart from curating the series of interventions, some of the curators from the Community Programme Team also lead guided tours for the Migration: a human story project. They walked the participants through the exhibition galleries' newly commissioned interpretation, animation, and banner installations.
Another example of the new intervention (the purple board under “Fighting in Spain”) added to the original exhibition panel on Spanish Civil War.
Recognising the importance of community participation and engagement will also be adopted in the PHM's next project Nothing About Us Without Us. This new project will result in an exhibition which looks into the history of disabled people, their rights and activism by working with a group of community curators of disabled people.
Written by Odelia Cheung
Extra sources:
The project Migration: a human story: https://phm.org.uk/installations/migration-a-human-story/
The guided tour of Migration: a human story by the Community Programme Team: https://phm.org.uk/events_new/migration-a-human-story-guided-tour/sat-25-september-2021-1-30pm-2-30pm/
The project Nothing About Us Without Us – Community Curator opportunities: https://phm.org.uk/vacancies/nothing-about-us-without-us-community-curator-opportunities/