Community Learning

We are a community resource and want to make sure that our neighbours always feel welcome.

Our Community Access Scheme gives members of Lambeth community organisations free entry to the Garden Museum. The Community Access Scheme is open to Lambeth community groups by application. Neighbour Cards are provided once applications have been approved and these give community group members access to all exhibitions, the permanent collection and the tower for free.

Find out more and sign up to be a Neighbour Card holder here

Every year we hold a Neighbours Day, usually in July. This is an opportunity for Neighbour Card holders and Lambeth residents to visit the museum and take part in a range of activities free of charge. We have a theme each year and for Neighbours Day 2024, our theme was ‘Butterflies and Moths’ as it coincided with the Big Butterfly Count. The event is also very much a family day too.

We strongly believe that creative, hands-on and multi-sensory activities help wellbeing. By bringing nature indoors through the use of leaves, clay and other natural materials, it helps us connect to the natural world and gardens.

Our Clore Learning Space overlooks our courtyard garden which is a verdant, green space all year round.

We also bring the theme of nature and gardens into our sessions through the links we make to our exhibitions and collection.

Social connection is also important and we find that providing refreshments in sessions brings people together over a cup of tea.

The latest report (September 2024) from the GLA about Creative Health in London is available here. Our Clay for Dementia programme is mentioned in the timeline.

Our Clay for Dementia programme has been running since 2017. Find out more information and next dates for sessions here.

We aim to be a dementia friendly museum.

Clay for Dementia was featured on CNN Health and can be watched here.

Dementia-friendly craft resources

We collaborated with the Crafts Council and Arts for Dementia in 2019 to create this Craft Club resource:

Dementia Friendly Craft

The museum’s Community Wall between the Clore Learning Space and the museum shop is a display and exhibition area for Learning projects as well as for Curatorial use. Displays change regularly.

The display case outside the Clore Learning Space is often used for showing ceramics made by participants on the Clay for Dementia programme.

The Garden Museum’s weekly gardening club, run by our Community gardener Jerome, takes place in the Healing Garden in Old Paradise Gardens on Saturdays from 11.30am – 2.30pm.

If you are interested in getting involved with the gardening club, come along and join in. Old Paradise Gardens is on Lambeth High Street.

To find out more, please email info@gardenmuseum.org.uk with the subject Community Garden.

As part of being an Arts Council National Portfolio Organisation, we have created a Community Panel. The Community Panel is made up of representatives of Lambeth based organisations, and individuals, who know the Garden Museum, mainly through the Learning programme.

We will be working with the group over the next 2-3 years to consult on various aspects of the museum, including the exhibition programme and associated events and activities. The group will meet formally, twice a year.

As a follow up to our Sowing Roots exhibition, we have published a Garden Museum Journal documenting the project. Based on oral history recordings, transcripts and the photographs of Federico Rivas, the stories of gardeners of Caribbean descent living in south-east London are told.

Completed with an essay by one of the young people involved in the project, Edward Adonteng, and an introduction by Marchelle Farrell, author of the book Uprooting, the Journal was compiled by the Head of Learning, Janine Nelson and uses her original artwork on the cover.

Published in 2024, the 62 page Journal with colour photographs can be purchased from the shop at the Garden Museum or online here.

Here are some of our past and present Community projects.