Impact case study database

Broadening and deepening MoH’s strategic vision and scope

CSH has provided the intellectual framework to support the museum’s move from:

(i) a focus on English domestic interiors of middle-class Londoners (The Geffrye Museum of English Domestic Interiors); to (ii) a socially, spatially and temporally expansive understanding of home (The Geffrye Museum of the Home); and (iii) its rebranding in 2019 prior to its planned reopening in 2021 as The Museum of the Home following an GBP18,100,000 Heritage Lottery Fund redevelopment project [5.3].

According to a former Curator at the Geffrye Museum, 'The research partnership with Queen Mary [has] had a transformative effect on the museum's understanding and interpretation of home' [5.1]. For the former Head of Collections and Exhibitions, ‘The inclusion of CSH research material in our collections, galleries and programmes has been key to the museum’s long-term strategy of becoming more relevant and more able to meet the needs of diverse local audiences’ [5.2].

Research at CSH has shaped MoH’s more inclusive approach to collections and exhibitions by, as the MoH Director states, ‘interrogating the meaning of home for diverse audiences and challenging how the concept of home is represented in a museum environment’ [5.3]. CSH has expanded the museum’s research capacity and embedded research as a core activity, as evidenced by the museum’s annual reports [5.4, 5.5], staff development (joint doctoral supervision by 15 museum staff), joint publications (Blunt et al., 2013; Blunt and John, 2014; Owens et al., 2016), and research events and activities (including 48 seminars, 12 conferences/workshops, annual lectures and PG study days attended by a total of over 1000 participants). CSH has ‘transformed the museum into an active space for debate and dialogue and a place for new research’ [5.3]. CSH is ‘one of the key pillars of the museum’s work. It demonstrates our capacity for partnership and collaboration. It gives us intellectual authority and gravitas, and raises our standing’ [5.2]. CSH ‘events, seminars and study days [have] allowed the museum’s staff to engage with the most current and challenging research relating to the subject of home’ [5.6].

Research at CSH has been included in the museum’s annual reports since 2011. Reporting that ‘much of our research is carried out through CSH,’ the annual report for 2014-15 states that ‘Our research programme continues to thrive, enhancing our intellectual approach and understanding of our subject area. The research supports the development of our displays and learning and exhibitions programmes in a sustainable way, enabling our staff and visitors to engage with new ideas and findings’ [5.4, p.8]. Under ‘Vision,’ the annual report for 2016-17 states that ‘through CSH … we are both initiating new research and encouraging international knowledge exchange and dissemination’ [5.5, p.3].

Diversifying MoH’s exhibitions and collections strategy into under-represented priority areas

Research at CSH has ‘given the museum the confidence and expertise to develop its practice in new ways’ [5.3]. Five co-curated exhibitions displaying CSH research have addressed under-represented subjects in the museum [5.5, p.7]: Swept under the carpet? Servants in London households, 1600 to 2000 made domestic service visible in the period rooms for the first time (c.43,000 visitors); The Aylesbury Estate as Home (2016; c.15,000 visitors) enabled the museum to address social housing for the first time [3.1]; Inside teenage bedrooms enabled the museum to reflect young people’s cultural practice and stimulated intergenerational dialogue (c.23,200 visitors); Home thoughts: stories of living in London (2017-18; c.18,600 visitors) featured films and displays on domestic religious practice for the first time; and Who once lived in my house? (2016; c.12,500 visitors) provided a new approach to thinking about home and temporality beyond the chronological history of home presented in the period rooms [3.5].

Research methods and findings at CSH inspired new museological approaches at the museum including (i) personal scenarios that put previously hidden histories at the heart of the period rooms [5.1] and informed ‘a new room-set scenario in the refreshed Rooms through Time displays’ ( Swept under the Carpet) [5.3]; (ii) personal testimonies and photographs in all four contemporary exhibitions, directly influencing the museum’s manifesto pledge that ‘personal stories are our lifeblood’ and with a long-term legacy in the new permanent Home Galleries ( Inside Teenage Bedrooms, Home and Religion) [5.3]; and (iii) work with contemporary artists ( The Aylesbury Estate as Home, Globe), described as ‘a very good developmental step for the museum’ [5.2, 5.5; 3.1, 3.4]

The exhibitions reached diverse audiences through the co-creation of school learning resources, performances, talks, tours (including for Hackney deafPLUS), youth, community holiday projects, and private view events. Swept under the carpet and Inside teenage bedrooms ‘provided inspiration for a range of craft-based multi-sensory workshops’ [5.5, p.8]. According to an Assistant Curator at the museum the ‘depth and quality of research produced by the Centre’ enabled many visitors to have ‘an emotional as well as an intellectual response to the material displayed’ [5.6]. One visitor to Swept under the carpet described the exhibition as ‘inventive and insightful and a great way to bring simple, real stories of “hidden” people alive,’ whilst another wrote that ‘it’s really made me think. [I] appreciate the way in which it draws on the current situation and connects it to the past’ [5.7]. In response to the Aylesbury Estate as Home exhibition, an American visitor wrote that ‘Everyone deserves a home. Protect the vulnerable. We’re all in this together. Great exhibit!’ whilst an Australian visitor reflected that it was positive ‘to gain alternative perspectives about life in a housing estate. Very sad about the dispossession and displacement experienced by some residents.’ Another visitor noted that it was ‘such an important exhibition, noting the intersection of design, housing policy, socio-economic change and community politics’ [5.7]. In articles about Inside Teenage Bedrooms, the Huffington Post reported that ‘Teenage bedrooms remind us of the life-changing magic of making a mess,’ whilst, for the Hackney Citizen, ‘[The] exhibition shows how the teenage bedroom is ‘a world of its own’ [5.8].

Research on the ‘Home-work’ programme provided the knowledge and rationale to enhance the collections, specifically to acquire the 18th-century print ‘Moll Handy’, depicting a servant embodied by the tools of her trade. Research on the ‘Home and religion’ programme led to the acquisition of a mezuzah (used to mark the threshold of a Jewish home) from a research participant. CSH co-produced a protocol for depositing material from collaborative research in the collections. Interview transcripts and photographs from CSH research on teenage bedrooms; Christian, Jewish and Muslim religious practice at home; and home, work and migration for Vietnamese people have been deposited in the Documenting Home collection, helping to diversify and deepen the collections and to ‘represent our local audiences’ in perpetuity [5.2, 5.3, 5.9].

Strengthening MoH’s engagement with its locality and enhancing residents’ understanding of home

The ‘Home-work’ AHRC CDA programme included research with Vietnamese residents about home, migration and the city that ‘helped GM build lasting contacts with the Vietnamese community’ close to the museum [5.2]. ‘Home-city-street’ [3.2, 3.6, 5.3, 5.10] has deepened links with the local area through two indoor street parties, artist-led workshops, a workshop at Hackney Archives, and four short films screened at MoH, Hackney Archives, Ali’s kebab shop (belonging to one of the participants) and the crypt of St Peter’s Church. These activities were attended by more than 250 people.

In addition, the app-based audio-walk ‘Home-city stories’ [5.10] was developed in collaboration with MoH and Hackney Archives (available on the izi.travel app) and runs from one to the other around Kingsland Road. ‘Home-city-street’ led MoH to think beyond a ‘confined’ sense of home to ‘vistas out’ into the wider city [5.2] and enhanced ‘our relationship to our local communities’ [5.3]. ‘Home-city stories’ has been evaluated with groups of teachers, students, older residents on the digital project ‘Hello Hackney,’ and museum and archive staff from MoH, Hackney Archives and Hackney Museum. Participants were positive about learning about ‘the lives behind the buildings’, hearing the voices of residents of different ages and ethnicities living in the same neighbourhood, and the importance of being reminded about racism in this area, particularly in the 1980s. For a long-term Hackney resident who works at Hackney Archives and Library, the audio-walk ‘made [them] think about where [they] feel at home’. For a learning manager at Hackney Museum, the audio-walk ‘gave [them] a deeper, more personalised understanding of conflicting views of Dalston as home: for example, one resident talking about Kingsland not feeling safe anymore and another saying the opposite’. The audio-walk made a group of three geography teachers think differently about ‘issues of community and belonging […] different views of people within the community; in-depth thinking; different scales and understandings of home: where you are born or where you live? [and] how areas have changed’ [5.7 & 5.10].