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World's first Museum of Homelessness opens 24th May in London

World's first Museum of Homelessness opens 24th May in London

World's first Museum of Homelessness opens 24th May in London

Friday, April 19, 2024


With one in fifty Londoners now homeless, Museum of Homelessness will be a cultural venue with a difference – telling previously untold stories while running campaigns and doing front line work that address both the causes and effects of today’s housing and homelessness crises.

Full info on its programme and tickets can now be found on the museum’s website: www.museumofhomelessness.org

A programme that fights back

The new museum has been created by people with direct experience of homelessness. Over the last decade this team has created exhibitions at Tate Modern, Manchester Art Gallery and the Wellcome Collection – as well as day centres, shelters, car parks and railway arches – winning multiple awards for its artistic and social impact.  MoH was granted a 10 year lease on Manor House Lodge last year and will open the refurbished site to the public in month’s time with a programme that includes:

  • How to Survive the Apocalypse, a new immersive experience from the team that won Temporary Exhibition of the Year in 2022. This new exhibition will draw on MoH’s front-line experience from a decade that has seen record levels of homelessness, a global pandemic and widening inequality. This will run on Friday and Saturdays each week until November.
  • Deep Dive: a Sunday politics and social affairs show hosted by museum co-directors Matt and Jess Turtle.
  • Knowledge is Survival, a series of workshops gathering some of the most important voices in homelessness organising, mental health campaigning and creativity. MoH has documented an 80% increase in deaths in the homeless population between 2019 and 2022, and these workshops will share survival guides for rehab, the mental health system, the asylum process and more.
  • Front line work: Throughout the week the museum will also provide community focused art, gardening, community meals, sexual health drop-ins, legal rights clinics, grief spaces, trauma informed coaching, recovery groups, and much more.

The museum’s interior and garden have been designed from scratch by people with experience of homelessness. The site features a new installation wallriot by gobscure, a bespoke room for the UK’s only dedicated homelessness archive, and a total reimagining of what a museum space can be.   

Museum Director Jess Turtle said:

“Over the last decade, we’ve shown how people with experience of homelessness understand how best to respond to an emergency and can work together to get things done. It’s these lessons from our community that sit at the heart of our first season in Finsbury Park. 

We’re building a new kind of museum – a place where everyone is welcome. There’s nowhere else that’s doing what we do, or responding to the deepening crisis in the UK like we are. We can’t wait to share our new home and our work with the public to get more people involved in making change for the better.”

Get in touch to find out more

If you would like a preview of the Museums work, attend events on the opening day, interview the team, or have any questions please get in touch with Matt Turtle on matt@museumofhomelessness.org

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