My London Story
My London Story is a landmark project capturing the unique stories of London’s young people – their past, present and future. In 2022, the museum worked with over 1000 young Londoners, to explore together the themes of identity, belonging and place in their own words. My London Story included a year-long collecting project funded by the Kusuma Trust UK, aiming to include more stories of young people in our collections. My London Story was a Museum of London project for BBC100, celebrating the BBC’s centenary in 2022.
“I found it very, quite interesting because it shows how young people have lived their lives. In a couple of hundred years, this is going to be history; this isn’t going to be the present anymore. So it’s good to keep their memories somewhere.”
My London Story participant
About the project
Watch the video to find out more about the My London Story project.
My London Story Zine
Download the zine that was created to document the My London Story project
9 London secondary schools took part in the My London Story project.
The schools were located in 8 different London Boroughs.
1,335 students took part in the interactive assemblies.
270 students explored community, belonging and place through collaborative art workshops.
720 students visited one of our museum sites.
630 students participated and responded to the BBC 100 object list in an art workshop exploring collective identity.
420 students attended a bespoke curator talk.
36 students shared their life stories with us.
36 students were supported in an emotional support workshop, creating a personal river reflecting on their lives.
Over 50 family members, teachers and students attended the project celebration event.
Recording video histories
We recorded interviews on video with 36 young people aged 12-14 from 10 different schools across London. These videos will be added to the museum’s oral history collection and will give future visitors and researchers an insight into the lives, thoughts and feelings of young Londoners in 2022.
In the videos, the young people talk about their memories growing up, their relationships with family and friends, and touch on topics such as migration, change, safe spaces, achievements and hardships.
My London Story booklet
Download the booklet that we used to prompt and prepare students to tell their story.
A week of workshops in schools
Before recording the interviews with selected students, we delivered a week of creative workshops in each participating school.
Here, students had the opportunity to reflect on ideas of identity, belonging, and place:
What makes us who we are?
What is collective identity?
What does it mean to be a Londoner?
As part of BBC100, a year-long programme marking the centenary of the broadcaster, we partnered with BBC Archives to explore how objects can be used to tell a story and illustrate identity and belonging.
One of the objects included in the BBC 100 archive, the Woman’s Hour Quilt, inspired a creative workshop about freedom of expression. The quilt was made out of patches created by BBC Woman’s Hour listeners in 1993 to mark 75 years of women gaining the right to vote. Tiles included in the quilt referenced the Suffragettes as well as later women’s movements. The young people taking part in the workshop used this as a starting point to discuss ideas of freedom of expression and belonging to different groups. They talked about how symbols, objects and words can help us illustrate a personal sense of belonging. They then made their own tile or patch with symbols and images that are significant to them. The tiles were then placed together to reflect collective identity and community understanding.
The schools were invited to visit the Museum of London or the Museum of London Docklands for a study day. They explored the galleries looking at how the museum tells stories from different perspectives, then took part in object handling and creative art sessions.
We partnered with Shape Up, a collective of freelance artists who work with young people to build confidence and encourage social change through art and performance. They delivered an interactive assembly for up to a whole year group. Students took part in a series of games, drama exercises and creative group tasks, which got them to explore their place in their local area, London, and society more widely.
Visual Artist Alaa Alsaraji delivered a creative workshop exploring identity, community and belonging through place. Through continuous line drawing and mapping exercises, she encouraged students to reflect on these themes by drawing on everyday life experiences such as the food they like, the places they go to, their family and friends. Students made a big collaborative map drawing and their own individual zines.
The 36 students who recorded their interviews on video for the museum’s collection took part in an emotional support workshop. We wanted to make sure they were prepared and in charge of how they wanted to share their stories with the public. Social worker Shamuna Rahman got the students to map out their life stories on paper as a river, recording their highs and lows, and deciding on which branches of their journey they wanted to share or not share. This workshop provided a safe space for them to practice talking about their lives and experiences in preparation of the recording.
Poems on the buses
My London Story: Poems on the Buses was a poetry competition inspired by stories and objects from the BBC Archives and the museum’s collections. Read the winning poems by young people from London about how bus journeys connect people to their city, their communities, and their sense of identity.
