Museum of the Home: Rice cookers and radios used to recreate east London immigrant experience

The new galleries will reflect immigrant life in east London over more than a century
The Museum of the Home in Hoxton
The Museum of the Home

The sights, sounds and smells of Vietnamese cooking are among the tools being used to bring the east London immigrant experience to life in a new gallery at the Museum of the Home.

The museum, in Hoxton, is revampings some of its Rooms Through Time galleries to create new displays showing the different waves of immigration to the area from east European Jews fleeing anti-Semitism to post-war Irish immigrants and more recent arrivals from Vietnam.

Its 1911 room will recreate a Jewish tenement based on the 19th century Rothschild Buildings in Spitalfields, while the 1950s will be represented by the bedroom of an Irish couple complete with a radio playing a soundtrack, while the contemporary kitchen of a Vietnamese family will include the sounds of clanging pots and pans, beeping rice cookers and conversations switching between English and Vietnamese with the smell of broth simmering on the hob being piped in.

A fourth room will look at what the future could hold and how climate change and technological advances could change how people live in the capital.

Construction on the new rooms starts on January 7 and they are expected to be open by next summer while the existing Rooms Through Time galleries covering 1630 to 1830 will remain open.

Danielle Patten, Director: Creative Programmes and Collections, said the new galleries would tell “diverse, thought-provoking and personal stories of home” and were part of the museum’s “continued commitment to honouring the lived experiences of the communities it serves”.

Museum staff have worked with locals and descendants of immigrants to build up an accurate picture of what life was like and a museum spokeswoman said the “new narratives” would give visitors “a more immersive and intimate experience” as they are able to step into and experience the places called home by generations of east Londoners.

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