New migration museum ‘aims to equal Ellis Island’

THE UK’s first museum dedicated to migration will open in London later this month in a bid to create the “UK’s equivalent of Ellis Island”.

Housed in The Workshop in Lambeth, a new arts space once used for repairing fire engines, the museum will launch on April 26 and explore how the movement of people has shaped British history.

“We ought to have in this country a cultural institution that puts Britain’s migrant population and their stories at the centre,” Sophie Henderson, a former immigration barrister who is now the Migration Museum’s director, said. “It’s the topic that’s on everyone’s lips — even more so now after the EU referendum. People’s attitude to migration matters. There is such a strong case for a calm, sober, well-informed discussion and a venue for those conversations. This will be the perfect place to unpick what people think.”

The opening programme will include Call Me By My Name, an exhibition on the Calais “Jungle”, and a photography collection, 100 Images of Migration.

In the autumn, a new exhibition, No Turning Back: Seven Migration Moments That Changed Britain, will open, looking at major migration movements back through British history in the context of Brexit and forward to 2020, when mixed-race Britons are projected to be the biggest minority group in the country.

The project has more than 100 highprofile supporters, who include Labour peer Lord Dubs, who fled Nazi-occupied Czechoslovakia as a child and came to London on the Kindertransport, writer Sir Salman Rushdie, actress Joanna Lumley, novelist Dr Jung Chang and broadcaster Jon Snow. Trustees include Charles Gurassa, chairman of Channel 4, and Robert Winder, author of Bloody Foreigners: The Story Of Immigration To Britain.

The space will house the Migration Museum until at least February 2018; the goal for the museum is then to move into a permanent space.

“We would like a full-time venue in London that is the go-to destination for conversations about Britain’s migration history,” Ms Henderson added. “We think it’s a subject that merits its own space. Ellis Island is what inspired me — going there and thinking, ‘Why don’t we have one in the UK?’”