We run our own projects, working in partnership with local groups and individuals, but also contribute to the project work of other local organisations, museums and heritage organisations across London.
For advice and support about your heritage project, contact us and we’ll do our best to help you identify the right partners and funders. View our current projects page here to find out more about what we are working on.
Recent projects
- Hackney Heritage Migrations with Community Advance, 2022
- Collecting experiences of the pandemic in Hackney
- Autograph, 2016-17
- Stik, 2016-17 – Hackney Museum worked with world renowned local artist Stik to design a new banner for Pride 2016.
- Access All Areas, 2016-17
- Jewish Stamford Hill, 2016
- Home, 2016
- Stormont House Centenary, 2015-16
- Picture Taking, 2015
- Hackney City Farm at 30, 2015
- Retired Caribbean Nurses and the NHS, 2014
- Our Museum, 2012-16
Disability and access projects
People with learning difficulties and/or physical disabilities are well represented generally within the majority of our community exhibitions, but we also work with local people, groups and organisations to co-develop projects, programmes and exhibitions specifically related to the experiences of people with learning difficulties and/or physical disabilities in Hackney today and in the past.
Past Projects
LGBTQI+ history in Hackney 2017
To mark LGBT month last February, we launched a crowdsourced project to map, record and share the borough’s rich LGBTQI+ history and culture, highlighting times and places where significant and personal LGBTQI+ history was made in Hackney.
You can also help us build our collections by donating your personal records, photos, artefacts and memories to the museum so we can get a better picture of this important but often overlooked history. If you’ve got material you’d like to donate please visit our Donate an Item page.
Hello Cazenove, 2014
What does community mean to you? Hello Cazenove was a range of events and activities around Cazenove Road and North East Hackney which contributed to an exhibition at the museum in January 2014.
Mapping the Change, 2010-12
As one of 5 boroughs to host the London Olympic and Paralympics Games in 2012, Hackney is at the forefront of momentous change. Mapping the Change recorded the changes to local people’s lives.
Allen Road project, 2008
In 1972, Richard Scott photographed the whole length of the north side of Allen Road, N16. His slides have been digitally reconstructed to make a complete panorama. In 2008, Hackney Museum worked with Richard, and local residents, to create a new Allen Road panorama.
Abolition ’07: Commemorating the abolition of the transatlantic slave trade, 2007
Museum staff worked extensively with members of the African-Caribbean community in Hackney to devise and develop an exhibition, a documentary, a theatre performance and poetry based interactive tours for visiting school groups.
We also commissioned new artwork, art projects for local groups and this film in response to the parliamentary abolition of the slave trade.
I Love Hackney, 2006
An exhibition asking local celebrities why they loved the area in response to the Channel 4 television show, The Best and Worst Places to Live in the UK. Hackney residents also rose to defend their borough and an extraordinary 10-year civic pride campaign was born. Watch this film to see some of the responses.
Customising the iconic ‘I Love NY’ branding, ‘I Love Hackney’ was emblazoned on hundreds of thousands of badges, bags and posters. Driven by Hackney Council, it has been worn proudly by residents and visitors ever since, and customised to promote improvements from recycling and clean streets to public health.
London Museums Hub refugee heritage project, 2004-7
We worked with members of three Kurdish community organisations, Day-Mer, Halkevi and KCC, over three years to record aspects of Kurdish culture and heritage, and created a loan box of objects that schools can borrow and other educational resources for teachers.