Home Truths: Behind the Scenes Round Table

Lara Baclig is a Filipino-Swiss writer, producer and curator. Her practice aspires to enrich the possibilities around diaspora identity, memory as history and community building. She has worked with digital publication Asian Contemporary Art enabling representation for ESEA artists, and Chisenhale gallery developing a publication around transnational identities. She is part of community groups ESEA Sisters and ESEA Green Lions, actively creating spaces for ESEA diaspora through creative workshops and programming. She is also the Community Producer at the Museum of the Home and contributed to the curation of the new rooms.

Aurelien Enjalbert is the Participation Officer at Museum of the Home. Drawing from his background in queer art history, Aurelien is leading on the LGBTQIA+ representation in Museum of the Home's collection and interpretation within the rooms. He also manages the Community Authors programme, and part of the ongoing co-curation team of our period rooms. 

Louis Platman is Curator at the Museum of the Home. He was Research and Content Lead for the Real Rooms project, a co-curated redesign of the Museum's later period rooms which expands the types of homes and communities that the rooms represent, challenging the typical boundaries and rules of the period room format. Louis also drew on his own East End Jewish heritage for the curation of the 1913 Tenement Flat, a recreation of a flat in the Rothschild Buildings, which were located just off Brick Lane. He is now leading on the early stages of the redevelopment of the Museum's first five period rooms, which currently run from 1630-1830. Building on the work of Real Rooms, and examining histories of colonialism, sexuality, family and childhood among many others, this long-term project will radically change the early modern explorations of home within the Museum.

Trà My Hickin works at the intersection of the arts and community wellbeing as a publisher and community organiser. She uses storytelling and applies narrative approaches to social justice and community building projects. She works for the contemporary radical international literary press, Tilted Axis, an ongoing exploration into alternatives – to the hierarchisation of certain languages and forms, including forms of translation. She uses an intersectional and people-centred approaches to working with Vietnamese and other ESEA migrant communities, which she brings to her work with the An Việt Archives, Southeast and East Asian Women’s Association (SEEAWA), the Southeast and East Asian Centre (SEEAC), Kanlungan Filipino Consortium, ESEA Sisters and various other human rights organisations. Having been awarded a fellowship from Better Engagement Between East and Southeast Asia (BEBESEA) she is editing and translating a collection of life stories from Vietnamese refugees and migrants in Hong Kong.  

Dr Michael McMillan is a London based writer, playwright, artist/curator and academic, best known for his beloved and much praised, The West Indian Front Room, which was the Geffrye Museum’s successful exhibition (2005-06). It has since been iterated in the Netherlands, Curacao, Johannesburg and France, inspired the BBC4 documentary Tales from the Front Room (2007), part of Life Between Islands: Caribbean-British Art 1950s-Now (Tate Britain 2021-22), and the basis of his book, The Front Room: Diaspora migrant Aesthetics in the Home (Lund Humphries 2023). The Front Room is also permanently at the Museum of the Home (formerly the Geffrye Museum) - as well as his triptych film installation Waiting for myself to appear. Other recent work includes: Sonic Vibrations: Sound systems, lovers rock and dub and I Miss My Mum’s Cookin’, which was nominated for a Brighton Fringe award. He is currently an Associate Lecturer at the University of the Arts London, and Research Associate with VIAD at University of Johannesburg.

Dr Paula Serafini is Senior Lecturer in Creative and Cultural Industries at Queen Mary University of London, where she co-directs the MA Creative Industries and Arts Organisation. Her research is situated in the field of cultural politics, and her interests include extractivism, social movements, art activism, performance, the politics of cultural production and the role of culture in socioecological transitions. In her work, she employs interdisciplinary approaches, drawing from cultural and media studies, political ecology, political ontology, sociology, anthropology and art theory. In addition to her research, over the last decade and a half she has contributed to collaborative, decolonial practices in pedagogy and organising alongside autonomous collectives in London, where she is currently based. She is author of Performance Action: The Politics of Art Activism (Routledge, 2018) and Creating Worlds Otherwise: Art, Collective Action, and (Post)Extractivism (Vanderbilt University Press, 2022), and co-editor of artWORK: Art, Labour and Activism (Rowman and Littlefield International, 2017) and Arte y Ecología Política (IIGG-CLACSO, 2020).

Dr Chris Spring is an artist and writer. He has had solo shows in recent years at The Stash Gallery, Vout-O-Reenee’s (2019), at JG Contemporary Gallery (2021), at TM Lighting Gallery (2022) and at David Lloyd (2024). He curated many exhibitions on the arts of Africa, all of which featured work by contemporary artists, including: The Sainsbury African Galleries, British Museum (2001 -), La Bouche du Roi by Romuald Hazoumé (2007), Social Fabric: Textiles of Eastern and Southern Africa (2013), South Africa, Art of a Nation (2016) with John Giblin, Human Nature: Barthélémy Toguo (2019). His award-winning books include Angaza Afrika: African Art Now (2008), African Textiles Today (2012), African Art Close Up (2013), South Africa, Art of a Nation (2016) with John Giblin, and a novel Ted &Pterry (2022). Chris is an ambassador for The Africa Centre, London, a trustee of the October Gallery, London and a director of Jose Hendo’s ‘Bark to the Roots.’  

Gaynor Tutani (Art Adlib) is a curator, producer and writer who integrates her passions for arts, culture, community and education into exhibitions, events and art commentary. Her speciality is in public programming – hosting live performances, talks, interviews and poetry programs of which she extends as part of her practice as the Creative Programming Officer at Museum of the Home. Working across the Creative Programmes and Collections & Curatorial team, as well as the Commercial division, her role centres on aligning the Museum’s programming within the core values and vision of engaging with the museum communities through fundraising and programming that interrogates critical societal issues via an artistic lens. She co-founded EARTHworks[artists], a curatorial duo focused on fostering intergenerational creative collaborations. Gaynor holds a BA in History and the History of Ideas and an MA in Museum Cultures with Curating, specialising in decolonial approaches.