Newly opened in London, the Museum of Homelessness combines public education, archiving, research and campaigns with direct action to support homeless people. Kate Youde visits and speaks to the museum’s founders. Photography by Lucinda MacPherson
Ben Smithies carefully removes two artefacts from a wooden box and places them on top of each other on the counter in front of him. He then puts in headphones and repeats the words he hears, those of the owner of the treasured items.
While they are something “people take for granted”, these two black bin bags were a “godsend” for the homeless person who used them. Mr Smithies puts his head through a specially crafted hole in the larger bag, pulling the plastic down to show how it was worn as a waterproof tunic. He places the smaller bag, which stopped rain running down the person’s back, on his head.
The bags are among about 40 objects in the collection of the Museum of Homelessness, which opened to the public on 24 May. Mr Smithies’ piece of verbatim theatre is one of four performed by “object storytellers” during a preview Inside Housing attended of the new 90-minute show, How to Survive the Apocalypse.
This immersive production, designed by people with experience of homelessness, is the museum’s opening exhibition in its first permanent home.
Inside Housing first reported on the planned museum in 2017. Now, we have come to Manor House Lodge in Finsbury Park, north London, to pick up the story of what claims to be the world’s first museum dedicated to homelessness, and learn how it aims to engage the public and deliver frontline services.
The project is a decade in the making. Jess Turtle founded the museum with her husband and fellow director, Matt, in 2014. She previously told Inside Housing that she hit on the idea when MT Gibson-Watt, who was then chair of the Simon Community, the London homelessness charity, asked her to look at archive material in her attic.
Looking through the press clippings, records, photographs and notebooks made Ms and Mr Turtle, who both worked in the museum sector, think there should be a permanent museum that explores homelessness. “Hopefully, if we can learn better from the past, we can make better decisions today,” Ms Turtle told Inside Housing in 2017. Her parents founded a community that grew into what is now The Wallich, the Welsh homelessness charity.
The Museum of Homelessness received charity status in 2015 and worked from temporary spaces in London to deliver artistic work and campaigns at venues including the Tate Modern. Ms and Mr Turtle started the search for a permanent base in 2019, before last year securing a 10-year community lease for Manor House Lodge, a former gatekeeper’s cottage, from Haringey Council.
It has been a “huge project” to transform the “semi-derelict” building, says Mr Turtle. Work included knocking down a structural wall, restoring a pond and installing a “homely” kitchen. The council spent £50,000 bringing the space up to a “lettable standard”, he says; the charity invested a further £60,000 in capital works.
Mr Turtle says the charity has “museumified” where the public money ran out, by framing the straight line of paint the builders left on the staircase wall, marking the divide between the downstairs lobby covered by the funding and the upstairs. It is labelled “The Austerity Line”.
The couple involved people with experience of homelessness in the design of the garden and the interiors, which they wanted to feel like a home. Out went what Ms Turtle calls the “hostel blue” linoleum; in came herringbone flooring. There is “wisdom” in the design, she adds.
“A lot of people in the homeless community are neurodivergent, or those of us who are trauma survivors might [have the] processing [of] stuff going on and [become overwhelmed],” she says. “The community has designed a sensory border in the garden… The idea is that if we’re overwhelmed, we can walk up and smell the lavender, smell some rosemary, and ground [ourselves] through scent.”
Seven years ago, the couple imagined a museum with a residential element where people coming out of homelessness could live while receiving training in museum work and cultural practice. Ms Turtle thinks a homelessness museum is “more needed” now, but says the type of museum it is has been reshaped by the community, with the need for direct action “more urgent” due to rising homelessness.
The charity started conducting research and investigations “in response to misinformation” that exists about homeless people, she says. The museum also took over the Dying Homeless project, which collects and analyses data about people who die while they are homeless, from the Bureau of Investigative Journalism in 2019.
The museum’s work is split into four strands: research and campaigns; public-facing education on homelessness; building an archive; and direct action to support homeless people.
On non-exhibition days during the week, the museum provides facilities including community meals, sexual health drop-ins, and gardening and art sessions. Its Knowledge is Survival workshops on topics including healthcare and the asylum process, delivered weekly during June and July, are aimed at empowering the homeless community. Deep Dive, a free public politics and social affairs show hosted by Mr and Ms Turtle, will take place one Sunday a month.
The museum, which Ms Turtle says has an annual running cost of about £250,000, is funded by trusts, foundations and individuals. The charity does not take government contracts or funding. It is running a trauma-conscious coaching pilot with the aim that seven qualified coaches will provide paid-for training to frontline workers as an additional income stream. Ms Turtle hopes the exhibition will “wash its face” by attracting a paying audience.
When Inside Housing arrives for a preview of How to Survive the Apocalypse, we are greeted by a woman blowing bubbles and given a yellow ribbon bearing the words “Find refuge”. This is the first thing we will need to do if we are to survive the apocalypse – something we are later told is here now due to societal collapse. The production is not all doom and gloom though; hard-hitting facts are balanced with humour (listen out for Uncle Clive).
Instead of reading museum labels, we hear the words of people who donated items to the museum’s collection. Nell Hardy, one of the object storytellers, tells us about a homeless person’s walking stick. Ms Hardy herself became homeless when training as an actor and is the founder of Response Ability Theatre, a charity that represents and supports people who have experienced trauma. She says the “power of the art is in how authentic it is”.
“There’s a lot of nonsense in the [cultural industries] and a lot of appropriating stories for… whatever is convenient to make them mean [something] as opposed to what they actually mean,” she says. “So it’s such a breath of fresh air to be able to put the people first and say the art will make itself around the people, as opposed to having to make the people fit around the art.”
The production is designed to show what the homeless community has to offer and give visitors practical tips. “People who have experienced homelessness have quite a lot of survival skills, actually, and, with everything getting worse in the world, there’s a lot we can give,” says Ms Turtle. She says the community wants to reduce stigma and change perceptions of homelessness through the museum’s public-facing work.
The museum will pause public engagement in winter so as to focus on providing emergency activities in response to need, doing street outreach work and organising campaigns. But managing its different strands can be difficult, whatever the season.
“Emergencies constantly happen, so the frontline stuff does take precedence, obviously, because sometimes that’s a matter of life and death,” says Ms Turtle. “You’re not going to go and catalogue the archive when you need to support someone who has relapsed.”
Ms and Mr Turtle are mindful of keeping up the work across the different pillars. Progress is monitored by the museum’s core creative steering group of people with lived experience of homelessness and its board.
Core group member and object storyteller Lisa Ogun’ says people relate to Ms and Mr Turtle, as they are “leaders but… don’t hold [with] hierarchy”. The museum’s 15 (mostly part-time) employees, the majority of whom have direct experience of homelessness, all earn a salary of £34,800 or the pro rata equivalent, whatever their role, while freelancers and contractors receive an equivalent rate.
Ms Ogun’ says “the Museum of Homelessness family is joy” and it is a place where “you get looked after and you want to look after [others]”. “You’re supposed to go home and you’re still hanging [around] and you think, ‘Why am I still hanging?’” she says. “It’s because the love is keeping you here.”
As Inside Housing leaves the show, we spot the mural at the back of the main museum space. It reads: “Our solidarity is our most potent weapon.”
This is how we will survive the apocalypse.
How to Survive the Apocalypse is staged three times a day on Fridays and Saturdays until 30 November. The capacity is 25 people per show. Ticket prices range from free to £10, depending on your ability to pay, and must be booked online. Visit museumofhomelessness.org/
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