Listening to London

‘Listening to London’ was a community-led research project, funded by the Esme Fairbairn Collections Fund – delivered by the Museums Association during 2019–2022. The project aimed to engage new audiences with our Oral History collection, by supporting community volunteers to lead their own research projects and bringing in new interpretations to the collection.

Our museum has been collecting the life stories of Londoners since the early 1980s. Our Oral History collection has around 5,000 hours of recorded interviews with Londoners in 21 languages and covers an incredibly diverse range of topics. This includes the stories of London’s Windrush generation and refugees, to taxi drivers’ tales and 1950s teenage wisdom. Londoners’ memories are important to us. Some of the most powerful are held within this collection, capturing in their own words the stories of people otherwise underrepresented in historical records.

Listening to London aimed to actively engage diverse audiences with our collection. The project explored how the Oral History collection could find new ways to involve and represent Londoners in the new London Museum. This included encouraging participating researchers to review our collection, draw connections between stories of the past and experiences of today, including their own lived experiences. By doing this, we hoped to draw on the knowledge of Londoners who aren’t typically involved in museum research. This was a more democratic model of engaging with our collections, which in turn will shape and enhance stories at the new museum.

A person sharing their life story in their own words, accent and language has the power to build empathy and create powerful connections that cut across differences. We wanted to engage with Londoners (and non-visitors, in particular), with the aim to re-interpret, edit and maximise the impact of the Oral History collection. In doing so, we explored how to improve access to the collection, and how to better display it in the future.

The success of this project informed the launch of the ‘My London Story’ and ‘Collections for All’ projects. The first captures the diverse experiences of London’s children, and the second encourages Londoners to engage with and re-interpret existing collections.