As part of The Museum of Croydon’s ‘What’s Your Croydon’ year of programming, we were due to take over the Croydon Now Gallery for three months from the 1st February 2020. Obviously the pandemic had other plans, but we did manage to deliver half of our take-over before everything shut down…
Croydon has a rich history of storytelling, the legacy of which is a vibrant culture of storytelling today, so our exhibition explored the famous writers who have been educated, grown up, worked and lived in Croydon.
We set out to celebrate the many ways in which people of Croydon have told, and continue to tell, stories. We explored themes from the Museum‘s archive such as storytelling as propaganda, and storytelling which puts Croydon on the map! The exhibition represented a huge range of storytellers, from Agatha Christie to Derren Brown, Kirsty MacColl to Stormzy, Doctor Who to Terry and June!
There was also a range of events and displays linked to the exhibition in Croydon Library, who were part of this project.
Through workshops and play days we imagined walking the streets of Croydon with Sherlock Holmes, saw how the fairies of Mary Cicely Barker inspire us today and found out which Neil Gaiman story is set in East Croydon.
The activities were really successful and well attended, so it was especially sad for us not to be able to deliver the big interactive murder mystery set in the Museum that we had planned for the end of the exhibition. But we also realise how lucky we were to have the time that we did have, as all the other arts organisations lined up to run take-overs after us lost that opportunity when lockdowns led to the early closure of the gallery.















