Anyone who has ever made a mixtape, queued to see their favourite band or told their parents a lie or two will love London’s new museum, the London Museum of Youth Culture.
Set along Regent’s Canal at the St Pancras Campus in Camden, this is the world’s first museum dedicated to teenagers and young people, and celebrates everything that’s wonderful, messy, challenging and fun about being a teen.
What is the London Museum of Youth Culture?
This is not your typical museum experience. Rather than a traditional museum with detailed displays, the London Museum of Youth Culture is part archive, part social hangout, part record store. It’s an homage to being young and is a wonderful slice of nostalgia.
The museum is the brainchild of Jon Swinstead, former goth, raver and the cofounder of Sleazenation,a London-based fashion, clubbing, and lifestyle magazine that was published between 1996 and 2003.
What started as a private collection by Swinstead to preserve photographs, flyers and stories from clubbers and festival-goers, soon grew into an archive of youth culture spanning the last 100 years. Members of the public donated items, everything from ticket stubs to rave flyers, and today the London Museum of Youth Culture’s archives holds over 150,000 items.
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What is the Museum of Youth Culture like inside?
Set over two floors and across several different areas, the Museum of Youth Culture sits at St Pancras Campus in a custom-designed space near Camden Town.
Visitors enter on the ground floor where there is the Youth Club, a nod to a bygone era when local councils provided funding for safe, supervised spaces for teens to gather and socialise.
This modern-day version includes a cafe/bar, a small Rough Trade outlet, and a table arcade game. There’s also a custom designed foosball table created by artist Katie Town and populated with characters from different subcultures. I liked the addition of the Photo Booth for snapping fun, black-and-white photo strips – although at £7 a pop, it’s not cheap!
Heading downstairs there are two galleries, a permanent collection and a space for temporary exhibitions. This is also where the permanent archive is held although that’s not currently open to the public.
The hallways are covered in posters and pictures of teens and young people through the ages from flappers, teddy boys and mods to hippies, punks, goths, skaters, ravers, and any other subculture that you can think of. Fittingly, the concrete space feels not dissimilar from an underground club.
The Permanent Collection
The larger of the two gallery spaces, the London Museum of Youth Culture’s permanent collection tells the history of teenagers through photographs, fashion, technology, and oral histories.
It’s roughly divided into sections that cover protest, street parties, underground scenes and styles, night time shenanigans and taking up space. In other words, where teens like to hang out. Overall, it explores how teenagedom is a time of self-discovery, when young people forge their interests and their identities.
The walls are plastered with photographs, much like you would find in a typical teen bedroom, and there are various display cabinets with items including a ghetto blaster and cassettes, an original Sony walkman, and old ticket stubs.
Items of clothing hang from the ceiling, including a Salt-n-Peppa t-shirt, and in one corner there’s a Raleigh Chopper bicycle and a skateboarding ramp. One of my favourite things is the old BT phone booth, once a vital form of communicating the location for the next illegal rave. When visitors pick up the receiver, they’re invited to record their favourite teenage memories.
The focal point of the gallery is the custom-built sound system that was made by Linett Kamala, the first woman to DJ at Notting Hill Carnival in 1985. In the background is a video compilation of teens through the ages, mostly dancing at gigs. There’s also a fantastic soundtrack playing, which I enjoyed so much that I quickly found on Spotify.
The Temporary Exhibition Space
The current exhibition in this smaller space was curated in collaboration with the Museum of Youth Culture’s youth collective and is a delightful and humorous examination of the lies that we tell our parents when young.
The exhibition examines the idea that lies are not necessarily a bad thing, more a part of growing up and discovering who you are. It explores everything from the contraband snacks we took to school – and the entrepreneurial teens who made money from selling them at break time – to wearing clothes our parents certainly wouldn’t have approved of.
It also looks at the secret day parties that south Asian teens held because their parents wouldn’t let them out at night.
Part of the space is dedicated to a mock-up of a teen bedroom with a dressing table where visitors are invited to share the best – or worst – lies that they ever told their parents. This is one of the most heartwarming and hilarious parts of the exhibition.
Tales include stories of clandestine sleepovers with boyfriends when they were supposed to be at a friend’s house, or watering down bottles of vodka only for their parents to put the bottles in the freezer and have it explode, or fabricating university degrees. It’s very fun and will have you questioning the lies that you once told your parents.
Why you should visit the London Museum of Youth Culture
For a heady dose of nostalgia and a rose-tinted look back at the good old days, this is one museum you should definitely not miss. Kids, but especially teens, will also find it interesting, if only to question how on early cassette tapes worked. Filled with personal stories, an extraordinary collection of ephemera and memorabilia, and clearly a huge amount of passion, the London Museum of Youth Culture is a wonderful testament to teenagers and being young.
How to visit the Museum of Youth Culture
Timings: The museum is open Wednesday to Sunday from 12pm to 8pm (until 6pm on Sunday)
Ticket prices: The museum is free to visit although donations are welcome (and encouraged). Walk-ins are welcome but it may be worth booking a ticket in advance during busy periods such as the school holidays.
Address: 51 St Pancras Way, London, NW1 0PZ
Nearest Tube: Camden Town
