Photo: Matthew Turtle
Opening in the spring of 2023 and housed in Manor House Lodge in Finsbury park, the Museum of Homelessness aims to fight the stigma and spread awareness of the challenges faced by the homeless community in London.
Opened by Matt and Jess Turtle, it will be the world’s only museum centred around homelessness, with all staff at the museum having some experience of rough sleeping or being homeless themselves.
Matt Turtle spoke on the museum - “Our aim is to tackle the stigma and biases around homelessness…you can only really do that if you are educating on it through the museum but also trying to tackle the things that are happening at the same time. We are involved with a lot of campaigning work as well.
We don’t aim to eliminate all homelessness, that’s a huge project, but we want to provide input and help where we can.”
The museum will feature workshops, talks and performances about homelessness while also holding archive items.
As Finsbury Park could hold a lot of hidden homelessness (not just including people sleeping rough) but also those who live in emergency accommodation. The museum will provide 250 support sessions for people without permanent homes in the area every year.