Newham Heritage Week is a week-long series of exhibitions, talks, walks and activities to celebrate and explore the borough’s history from Saturday 21th -Sunday 29th October.
One of the events held was the Pop-up Museum of Childcare, which took place on Friday 27th between 10:30 and 12:30. The museum was organised by On the Record as a part of Holding the Baby- an oral history of childcare and parenting, which aims to bring people of different generations together to discuss their experiences of childcare and create both an exhibition and website through recording oral history interviews.
The pop-up museum requested everyone to bring a favourite toy from their childhood or any other significant or sentimental objects they had to the museum so they could share their stories with others and also provided the opportunity to see what other people bought to see what objects are special to different people and why. The museum had the object of getting people from all ages to discuss bringing up kids in Newham in the past and present.
The stalls contained a big scrapbook that was filled with writing about the favourite memories people had, drawings depicting their experiences and recollections of raising their children and positive messages about the Pop-up museum. Jemima wrote ‘Thank you for educating me of my surroundings’ and Osman requested to have ‘More Heritage projects!’
The stalls also had copies of a memoir by Eric Dawson, who was a painter, about growing up in East London 1918-1939. The book provides insightful general information about the lives of people back then between the two World Wars in a condensed and easy to follow manner, with paintings to help supplement the storyline.
Among the collection of memorabilia there was a bible that was given to a Janice by her father during the Second World War.
A mother that was born in 1935 recollected she had to beg for nursery for her son as he was becoming closed off and not everybody took their kids to nursery. One mother who was born in 1929 said, “You’d never see a car. You played out in the street because you didn’t have to worry about anything. There was nothing to be frightened of then.” This is a clear difference of how children are raised now as most children go to nurseries and the world is too dangerous to let children play in the streets alone nowadays.
Shahin, who was also a mother in her late 50s, expressed the pop-up museum was ‘a very good idea and quite catchy’ and that ‘we need past memories in society because we are now so in touch with technology that we forgot about the past.’ Shahin liked ‘the visuals to collect the past’ the most and believes the ‘theme is so inspiring.’
by Maqdas, GGSK College
