Museum Lates: Garden Museum and The Horniman
Two standout Museum Lates in 2024 sparked collaboration, engaged communities, and enriched research.
At Goldsmiths, we partner with arts and cultural institutions to connect the public with the expertise of our researchers and talented students in meaningful ways. These events break down barriers between research and the wider world, creating opportunities to share knowledge, inspire new ideas, and bring academic work to life.
In 2024, Goldsmiths partnered with the Horniman Museum and Gardens and the Garden Museum to co-curate two museum lates, weaving research, creativity, and public engagement together in new and exciting ways.
Garden Museum Late – Frank Walter: Artist, Gardener, Radical
On 23 February 2024, the Garden Museum hosted a sold-out Friday Late, co-curated with Goldsmiths public engagement team.
This special event invited visitors to explore the work of Frank Walter – one of the most significant Caribbean visual artists of the twentieth and twenty-first centuries – through interactive workshops, creative writing, and live performance.
Including an element of performance in the evening allowed our audience to experience the permanent collections and the architecture of the building in a way they have not previously been able to
Directors of the Garden Museum
The exhibition Frank Walter: Artist, Gardener, Radical showcased Walter’s deeply personal and politically charged reflections on Antiguan landscapes, Black identity, environmentalism, and social justice.
Goldsmiths academics and artists, alongside IRIE! dance theatre, designed hands-on activities that transformed these themes into interactive experiences, encouraging visitors to respond creatively through craft, movement, and discussion.
Crafting inspired by Caribbean women
In a tangible crafting workshop, participants transformed discarded fabrics into textile art, inspired by the resourcefulness of Caribbean women.
Led by Rose Sinclair OBE, they crafted tablemats and decorative pieces, exploring themes of sustainability, migration, and ancestral craft traditions.
Its great to have the opportunity to learn a new skill from an expert and hopefully pass the technique on
Visitor feeback
Exploring slipstream fiction
In another activity, visitors explored themes of ancestry, migration, and radical creativity through slipstream fiction – a practice that blurs the lines between reality and the surreal. Led by Professor Joan Anim Addo, Dr Marl'ene Edwin, and students from Goldsmiths' Centre for Caribbean and Diaspora Studies, attendees contributed written reflections that became part of a collective storytelling tapestry.
Slipstreaming at the Garden Museum
A crafting workshop led by Goldsmiths' Rose Sinclair
Reimagining histories of oppression in London streets
Elsewhere in the museum, Louise Ashcroft, Lecturer in Art, led an interactive workshop where participants shared Caribbean tea and decorated leaf-shaped cardboard ‘delivery boxes’. Each box contained a leaf from a London street with historical ties to slavery. Visitors were invited to symbolically ‘redirect’ these leaves to a new address, reimagining how histories of oppression are acknowledged today.
People were keen to talk about the concept of the work and the politics around street names with difficult histories. Intense discussions were able to happen in a way which felt safe and convivial.
Louise Ashcroft
Transforming the museum through movement
At the climax of the event, IRIE! dance theatre brought Frank Walter’s world to life through movement, presenting a participatory performance blending African and Caribbean dance traditions.
The performance featured youth performers and BA dance students, accompanied by live drumming, invoking a carnival-like energy, transforming the museum into a space of joy, reflection, and community.
It was a great community, creative and cultural atmosphere; the process seemed to flow organically. Everyone was free to take in the activities in a relaxed and thoughtful way
IRIE! dance theatre
IRIE! dance theatre performing in the main hall.
Materials from Louise Ashcroft’s interactive workshop.
Landmarks Late at the Horniman Museum & Gardens
Returning to the Horniman for the first time since 2019, this Museum Late was co-curated with Goldsmiths as part of the Being Human Festival 2024, a nationwide celebration of humanities research through public engagement.
Marking the festival’s 10th anniversary, the evening transformed the museum into a vibrant, interactive space where visitors could explore how humans mark the land, and how the land marks us.
Through immersive performances, hands-on workshops, and creative encounters, the event brought research to life, inviting audiences to engage with themes of deep time, climate crisis, and cultural heritage.
Academics, artists, and community practitioners came together to offer a rich and varied programme, where movement, sound, storytelling, and craft became tools for discovery and connection.
The Horniman Museum at night
Through immersive performances, hands-on workshops, and creative encounters, the event brought research to life, inviting audiences to engage with themes of deep time, climate crisis, and cultural heritage. Academics, artists, and community practitioners came together to offer a rich and varied programme, where movement, sound, storytelling, and craft became tools for discovery and connection.
Exploring Caribbean textile traditions through rag rug makind
In the Handling Collection, Rose Sinclair guided visitors in creating their own sections of a rag rug, while exploring the rich history of Caribbean textile traditions and their lasting influence in the UK. The workshop provided a moment of stillness within the busy Museum Late, where learning a new skill became a gateway to deeper conversations about culture, identity, and sustainability.
It was so grounding and relaxing and rewarding
Visitor feedback
Dancers move like microorganisms
In the Education Centre, visitors experienced an interactive performance using augmented reality, created by Rebecca Evans and the Pell Ensemble in collaboration with Lead Creative Technologist Clemence Debaig and team. Wearing VR headsets, they watched dancers in motion capture suits move like microorganisms in extreme environments, blurring the lines between the physical and digital worlds in an intimate, otherworldly performance.
Visitors responses become an evolving soundscape
In the conservatory, Dr. Marcus Leadley and MA students from Goldsmiths Electronic Music Studios, Konstantinos Damianakis and Adam Barkely, invited visitors to contribute drawn responses on postcards. These drawings were digitally transformed into an evolving soundscape, shaped by field recordings from the museum. Each new postcard altered the atmosphere in real time, turning personal reflections into a collective, ever-changing sonic experience.
An interactive drumming workshop celebrating 38 years at IRIE!
In Gallery Square, visitors were welcomed to take part in a vibrant drumming workshop led by IRIE! dance theatre, where they had the chance to learn rhythms and techniques. After the workshop, the group performed a live dance and percussion piece that explored 38 years of African and Caribbean dance history at IRIE!.
Conversations around the Horniman's Natural History Gallery
Becca Voelcker led a series of conversations exploring the Horniman’s Nature and Love project and the transformation of the museum’s Natural History Gallery. Visitors engaged in discussions about how museums evolve, whose stories get told, and how history can be reinterpreted in contemporary contexts.
A guided walk of the Horniman's North American collection
On a guided walk led by Dr. Padraig Kirwan, visitors explored the museum’s North American collection, delving into the historical and cultural links between the Choctaw Nation and the Irish people. Reflecting on interwoven histories of migration and solidarity, they drew unexpected connections between objects and lived experiences.
Find out more about Being Human and the Horniman late event here
Looking forward
Building on the energy of these events, we’re looking forward to working with the Horniman Museum and Gardens and the Garden Museum again in the future, continuing to explore new ways of connecting people, ideas, and cultural heritage through research-led public engagement.
On the horizon, we’re heading to Nunhead Cemetery for a unique Late – an evening that will bring the historic cemetery to life through interactive activities and performances led by Goldsmiths researchers, students and the community.
Keep an eye out for more opportunities to experience Goldsmiths’ collaborative work in action.