Migration Stories
“It was a cold and drizzly November day in 1948. As he descended the creaky gangway to shore he couldn’t begin to imagine what adventures lay ahead. Behind was the ship that had brought hundreds of men to the UK from the warmth and sunshine of the Caribbean. In front of him a train station, with clouds of steam and smoke billowing into the dull grey sky. Clutching his ticket and small leather suitcase he was ushered forwards. He had come with the promise of a job and a new life. With an outward confidence, that belied an unspoken fear within, he ventured onward to his new future.”
If we look hard enough we find migration stories all around us. Our family, our friends or even ourselves have a story to tell about this topic. Each is unique but at the same time each is draped in the same themes. Of bravery, of perseverance, of overcoming the barriers thrown in their way.
As with each person, each new generation has their own migration story. From the opportunity in front of them to the inevitable resistance to their arrival. But what do these migration stories have to do with immersive learning?
The answer lies in what you might think is an unusual place. Amongst the bustle of a South London shopping centre lies an innovative museum that many have not heard of. The Migration Museum lies at the very heart of the community in Lewisham and it uses immersion to tell the stories of migration in the UK. How they do that is what we’ll explore here.
The Visitors
The museum is currently located in the heart of the Shopping Centre in Lewisham. Many of its visitors therefore don’t intentionally set out to visit an exhibition. They simply walk through the doors out of curiosity or boredom. As such, the visitors are not there to learn and their initial engagement with the learning process is often low.
Do you think this sounds a lot like one of the problems that immersive learning is designed to overcome? In this scenario it may not be disenfranchised learners in the workplace, but it is still people who need to become engaged quickly before they turn their attention elsewhere.
Sounds like the perfect environment for some immersive learning, but what exactly should people be taking away from their visit?
The Learning
If we were teaching the subject of migration, what would we want people to learn about it? The answer is both complex and nuanced. However, at its core is the message that at some level we are all migrants, and our collective stories of success and failure are what make up our world.
In their current exhibition, the museum focuses on the stories of the businesses that migrants have founded and built through the centuries of migration to the UK. From the family run businesses we each know and love to the instantly recognisable global brands we see every day. This is only one layer of the migration story, but it is one that we can all learn from. And it is also one that can inspire and empower future generations to follow in the footsteps of so many before them.
The Immersion
In a museum context we have a different audience and set of tools available to deliver our immersion. At special events we can use actors and theatrical staging, but day to day these are not practical. Therefore, a museum has to use its own toolkit of techniques to immerse visitors.
The key tool in immersive learning is the use of storytelling to engage people in a given learning scenario. In this setting we need to grab people’s interest and enable them to discover this narrative on their own terms.
The current exhibition at the Migration Museum has therefore created a bright and colourful street full of shops. Each one of these is a highly visual and immersive mechanism to give us direction and purpose in exploring the museum. Once in these individual settings the stories leap out at you using media on TV screens and written stories presented in innovative ways.
In the restaurant you’ll find the story laid out as a menu on each of the tables. In the Takeaway you can pick up the phone, not to take an order from a hungry customer, but to hear recollections of migrants who have grown up in these businesses. In the barbershop you can sit in one of the chairs and hear the conversation all around as you imagine your hair is being cut.
The design of the museum would also lend itself perfectly to hosting immersive events that use actors and theatrics to add additional layers to the storytelling. The use of an overarching narrative to drive and facilitate interactions with actors by the visitors is one used successfully by other museums. It would give an even more powerful voice to the current stories and would work well in this context. Hopefully this is something that the museum will look to develop as it grows further.
The Stories
Each of the cameos in this immersive world tells a story of migration. These are the stories of the businesses that have been founded and grown by migrants arriving in the UK. Through them we hear the challenges that these people have had to overcome, many of these are greater simply because they were seen by others as migrants.
Reflecting back on the overall learning goal of the museum, it is this patchwork of stories that builds the overall picture. Piece by piece we see how across the businesses we interact with across every aspect of our lives are intertwined with migration stories.
You will find many stories at the museum, but one that was enriched by the staff at the museum particularly resonated with me. In the Chinese Takeaway the counter had been recreated from the childhood memories of its curator Angela Hui. Behind the counter are the workbooks of children learning to read and write both English and Chinese.
During a tour of the exhibit one of the amazing museum team mentioned the story of a small boy who had recently visited. She said that he had found the books and was excited to see that they were almost identical to his own. This is the perfect illustration of how attention to detail can help strengthen the connections between the learning environment and a visitor’s own personal story.
Since her time working in her parents’ takeaway, Angela Hui has gone on to become a renowned author and journalist. Hopefully the connection created by a workbook will inspire that young boy to create his own migration story.
This example serves as another reminder how immersive learning can create connections with learners and inspire action in ways that other forms of learning cannot. And to understand the significance of the image below you’ll need to visit the museum!
The Reflection
I’ll be totally honest here. Before I received an invite to an event at the Migration Museum, I had never heard of it. I had also never really considered that a museum dedicated to this subject was important. But like all the best inventions in our world, once you see it you can’t understand why no-one thought of it before.
The museum is an important piece in our telling of the story of the UK, but its story also transcends national borders. Migration is a universal story, and one that ultimately our world is better as a result of. I found it to be one of the best type of experiences, an unexpected source of stories in an unlikely location that inspired a transformation in thinking.
If you are in the UK then you should take the time to go visit. If you run your own business then you will definitely find inspiration in the current exhibition. And if you need another reason to go then its free to visit and you don’t need to book in advance. Check out the museum’s website for more information:
In the context of immersive learning the museum showcases some immersive techniques that we can learn from to engage potential learners. At a deeper level we can all learn from the determination and fortitude we find in the stories it tells. These can help us enrich the stories we write for all the immersive learning experiences we create.
Martyn is a founder of chronyko who have over 15 years experience building and running escape games and many other types of immersive training and skills development experiences. He has seen first-hand how immersive learning can have a measurable impact. He is a passionate believer in how we can all learn from these experiences to better support lifelong learning for everyone.
