Museum in the market
Part museum, part junk shop, part cabinet of curiosities – this is the Museum in the Market, where nothing is for sale and everything has a story…
Is that really the pea that the princess felt through 20 mattresses? Who lost this eyeball? And how did that teapot end up in someone’s bed?
Delightfully unpredictable and inherently spontaneous, the Museum in the Market snuggles into bustling markets to catch people unawares with things and stories, and stories about things. It is a space for talk and for sharing, a space of memories and of discoveries. Filled with objects from the mundane to the fascinating, and animated by two storytellers, the Museum in the Market looks a little like a junk shop, a little like a cabinet of curiosities – here nothing is for sale, but everything has a story.
ACTIVATING PUBLIC MARKETS
Storytellers have worked in museums for decades, performing stories to contextualise and animate collections. By placing this ‘museum’ in the marketplace, barriers to engagement melt away and permissions shift, creating a demotic space for cultural exchange. Combining storytelling, object handling, conversation, and imagination, the objects become delightful keys to meaning-making, cultural connection, stories, lived experiences, memories, fears and dreams.
HEALTH SETTINGS & HOSPITAL GARDENS
We also take a mobile version of the museum into health settings and hospital gardens. This is a wheeled cabinet of curiosities made by the marvellous maker Jack Stilling. Piloted with Horatio’s Garden in Stanmore, the Cabinet of Curiosities gives patients and their visitors a chance to escape, to become ‘armchair’ travellers, to connect over ideas and stories. Objects can trigger memories and inspire wonder; stories create spaces for new possibilities; and talk and laughter become their own kind of medicine.
The cabinet itself has been designed with consideration to infection control, patients can engage from beds, chairs and wheelchairs; and the objects the cabinet holds can be curated for specific audiences. Where appropriate, the objects can be handled, with potential for additional creative health outcomes.
SINGING THE MARKET
We wanted to know if the market could be sung! So, in 2026 we invited the remarkable singer-songwriter and creative health researcher, Todd Henkin, to join the Museum in the Market. Instead of using his talents within the museum, Todd worked across the markets co-creating songs with the market traders themselves and with the shopkeepers surrounding the market. Through a process of dialogue and connection, Todd unearthed their stories, their histories and their motivations, and gathered their fears, hopes and dreams for the market. The songs themselves were sung across that market day. Maybe they’ll be remembered. Maybe they won’t. But what they reveal is the incredibly rich life surging underneath the surface of the market and its community.
