Open today, Thursday 26 March

Irish Blood, English Hearth: creativity, identity and the migrant Irish home

A symposium exploring the Irish diasporic home as sanctuary and catalyst in shaping post-war British music, performance, and identity.

Date

Wednesday 1 April 2026

Time

10.30am - 5pm

Where

Museum of the Home - 136 Kingsland Road, E2 8EA

Price

£0 - £20

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Events Talk

Funded by the Irish Emigrant Support Programme 

Organised in partnership with David Kelly, Sean Campbell from Anglia Ruskin University, and the Centre for Studies of Home.

Join us for a symposium that explores home as a dynamic cultural space, beyond private retreat, in which diasporic identity was sustained, and new forms of music and performance were forged.

Our full-day programme of music, talks and discussion brings together historians, cultural scholars, musicians, and community voices to consider material culture, gendered labour, religion, and intergenerational transmission within the migrant home.

This symposium positions the Irish home as an intimate yet powerful engine of cultural transformation where identities were preserved and influential contributions to post-war British music and performance emerged. The programme will create a dialogue with the display of A Room Upstairs in 1956 in our Rooms Through Time gallery.

A limited number of free Student Concession tickets are available for this event.

Programme

10am:
Registration and refreshments

10.30am – 10.45am:
HE Martin Fraser welcome & Museum of the Home introduction
10.45am – 11.30am: Keynote Address (chaired by Sean Campbell)
Prof. Enda Delaney (University of Edinburgh), ‘Home Away from Home: The Irish in Post-war Britain’ and Q&A
11.30am – 12.30pm: Session 1 (chaired by Alison Blunt)
Dr Sara Hannafin (University of Limerick), ‘The nation flagged daily: The home lives of the second-generation Irish in Britain‘
Sean Campbell (ARU Cambridge), ‘Music, the migrant home and the second-generation Irish in England’
Q&A
12.30pm – 1.30pm: Lunch by Emerald Eats
Opportunity to view the 1950s room
1.30pm – 2.25pm: Session 2 (chaired by Sean Campbell)
Joe Horgan (Irish Post), ‘Reflections on the home lives of the second-generation Irish in Birmingham‘
Rosanna Lee (V&A x Design Trust), ‘Cuttings from the Cranesbill’
Q&A
2.25pm – 2.45pm: Break
2.45pm – 4pm: Session 3 (chaired by Alison Blunt)
Orla Fitzpatrick, ‘Home places: writing and picturing the Irish diasporic home in London‘
Rachael Kelly Ryder (Glasgow School of Art and National Library of Scotland Moving Image Archive), ‘The Migrant Home in Motion: Memory, Music and Moving-image‘
Prof Aoife Monks (Queen Mary University of London), ‘A Nation Once Again: Houses and Performers as Diasporic Archives‘
Q&A
4pm – 5pm:
Closing remarks and refreshments

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