LONDON.- Museum of the Home has bucked the trend widely reported in March 2023 which outlined the UK’s leading attractions seeing visitor numbers down 25% on 2019 pre-Covid levels. In 2022/2023, Museum of the Home has seen visitor numbers rise more than 22% [147,000] above their ambitious forecast of 120,000 visitors. This is also more than 33% up on 2017/2018, the last year of operation before the Museum closed for their major capital project, before reopening in June 2021.
The Museum’s delivery of a truly inclusive Winter Festival across 2022 and 2023 celebrated cultures and faiths from around the world, reflecting communities across Hackney and Greater London. With targeted community engagement, innovative programming and mould-breaking activities for their broad spectrum of visitors, the Museum has grown the pool of visitors engaging with their programming with notable growth among people aged 18 to 34, as well as East and South East Asian, Black British and African origin audiences.
This exceptional work with and for their local community has been recognised with a Museums + Heritage Award nomination for their Community Engagement work on Free Tea Fridays. Museum of the Home also launched and hosted a collaboration with Hackney Foodbank, who hold a food parcel distribution at the Museum every Monday as well as a lunch club on Tuesdays during school holidays, to empower food bank users to capture their experiences through art, photography and a range of creative activities.
In summer 2022, the Museum’s timely post-pandemic Festival of Sleep launched with a glamorous Pyjama Party sponsored by Cath Kidston. This inspired Radical Home, an ambitious series of Late events which developed the model to encompass talks, exclusive tours, access to rarely seen parts of the Museum’s collections and creative activities to explore ideas of ‘home’, delivering a sea-change from the ‘typical’ museum-going audience to welcome younger, diverse new visitors.
The Museum’s commitment to providing accessible and affordable learning opportunities continued through Easter 2023 with fun and thought-provoking workshops that use the Museum’s commitment to exploring what future homes might look like as inspiration for young imaginations. The Museum team have prioritised placing sustainable practices at the heart of their programming by exploring hopeful responses to climate change and our changing society, and working with artists to demonstrate how sustainability and reuse can be embedded into everyday life. As part of the London Craft Week Festival, visitors can enjoy free talks and workshops at the Museum with Kierra Campbell and Whinnie Williams of Poodle and Blonde.
2023 looks to be another year of collaboration and innovation for the Museum with their recently announced project The Fur Chest, inspired by the Museum’s historic almshouses and created by artist and filmmaker Katharine Fry, continuing throughout the year. They have also commissioned a new contemporary art exhibition titled No Place Like Home (A Vietnamese Exhibition) Part II, co-curated and led by KV Duong and Hoa Dung Clerget, reflecting the Museum’s location in the heart of the Vietnamese community on Kingsland Road. Museum of the Home will also host the inaugural Queeriosities art and makers fair on 20th and 21st May, curated by Davy Pittoors. May will also see the Museum host the closing event of Artquest's Unlocking the Collections residency, with artist-in-residence Elora Kadir in conversation with artist-curator Jamila Prowse following a screening of Kadir’s film, Comfort Furniture. September will see the return of Ceramics in the City showcasing a range of pottery and ceramics by both leading names and rising talents.
