The Empathy Museum

A touring museum built around the idea of teaching social acceptance, encouraging conversation and learning about people through artistic events? That's The Empathy Museum!

What is it like to have spent years in prison, or to be a child growing up in Tehran, or to have rediscovered love in your eighties? The Empathy Museum will help you find out.

Launched in 2015, the Empathy Museum is the first experiential arts space dedicated to helping us all look at the world through other people’s eyes. By touring internationally, it will explore how empathy can not only transform our personal relationships but also help tackle global challenges such as prejudice, conflict and inequality.

Manifesto taken from The Empathy Museum's site http://www.empathymuseum.com

"I walk a mile in your shoes... Now I'm a mile away, and I've got your shoes" - Kings of Leon - Comeback Story

Comedy has always been a great communicator of ideas, just like art, and this lyric always makes me giggle.

They're a new venture and have so far created two 'installations' using interactive media and the power of people. It's such a wonderful idea and I'm in love with the idea of art being used as a way of bringing people together. Large scale community arts projects obviously already exist, art therapy is alive and well, but I sometimes feel that 'Art' with a capital 'A' , the kind that occupies galleries and museums, still has the power to disengage and confuse unless you are willing to read the plaque next to it. I like the idea of this pulling art back to humanity and using it to try and make communities more accepting, engaged and ready to listen to each other's stories. I reckon there is also an opportunity hidden in here for a moving image/multimedia project... projections? virtual reality? animation? apps?

Although there is an element of these kinds of projects preaching to the converted; to those already curious about other lives and willing to share their experiences empathetically... I'd like to think that by offering these stories out into the world, they are encouraging people to learn about lives they never knew to even ask about.