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For a decade after it was founded in 2014, the Museum of Homelessness was without a permanent home, only existing through temporary exhibitions and programmes. But now after signing a ten-year community lease, the museum has finally officially opened at a long-term home at Manor House Lodge, a former gatekeeper’s cottage in Finsbury Park.
Run by husband and wife team, Matt and Jess Turtle, the Museum of Homelessness is the only museum in the world dedicated to homelessness. Everyone who works there has been impacted by homelessness in some shape or form.
The museum launched the new space on May 24 with an exhibition titled ‘How to Survive the Apocalypse’, which draws on ‘MoH’s front-line experience from a decade that has seen record levels of homelessness, a global pandemic and widening inequality’. Each object includes an anonymous testimony that will be performed by a cast of storytellers.
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The brand-new Museum of Homelessness also features an interior and garden both designed by people with direct experience of homelessness, plus a bespoke room for the UK’s only dedicated homelessness archive.
On top of all that, the museum is dedicated to offering community focused art, gardening, community meals, sexual health drop-ins, legal rights clinics, grief spaces, trauma informed coaching, recovery groups and more.
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.’
The Museum of Homelessness’ ‘How to Survive the Apocalypse’ exhibition is open to the public until November. Find out more here.
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From the V&A to the Natural History Museum, everyone knows all the heavyweights of London’s cultural scene. But what about when you’re after something a bit more niche? Check out Time Out’s list of some of London’s best lesser-known museums.
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