The Empathy Museum is a series of art installations, founded in 2015 by artist Clare Patey. Its purpose is to help visitors view the world through the perspectives of others, using participatory storytelling and dialogue. The project states it can help people approach global issues such as prejudice, conflict and inequality by expressing empathy to change relationships. A weekly podcast, A Mile in My Shoes, was started in 2018.
Background and description
The project was a creation of artist Clare Patey. She was helped by a small team including Rachel Briscoe, Ania Obolewicz, Al Primrose. In May 2018, Patey began a weekly podcast titled: A Mile in My Shoes. The podcast shares stories of the lives of various people around the world. The Empathy Museum does not have a permanent location. Its projects are each designed as temporary installations that travel to international locations and are produced by Artsadmin who has created three projects for the museum since its establishment in 2015: 1001 Books, Human Library and A Mile in My Shoes. The Empathy Museum's offices are based in London, United Kingdom.
Human Library is "like any other library but instead of borrowing a book you can borrow a person for conversation". The library presents a selection of "Living Books": people who tell a story about their life and discuss it with a member of the public visiting the installation. Each Human Library is centred around a different theme including fashion, food, home and age. Human Library has been presented in London at SOAS, Whitechapel Gallery, the London International Festival of Theatre, and in Perth, Western Australia, at the Perth Writers Festival.
''A Mile in My Shoes''
A Mile in My Shoes is a travelling "shoe shop" with over 250 pairs of shoes and audio stories collected by the Empathy Museum. Visitors are invited to walk a mile in someone else's shoes by temporarily exchanging their footwear for a pair in the museum's collection. While walking, visitors listen to a story about the shoe owner's life through a pair of headphones. The project can be centred around certain topics. The Health Foundation commissioned a project around health and social care, The Entrepreneurial Refugee Network supported one on migration and The National Theatre of Scotland commissioned one based on the year of the young person. A Mile in My Shoes has been presented across England and internationally, including in Belgium, Australia, Ireland, Brazil, Scotland and the USA, and most recently in 2019 in Denver, Colorado at the Biennial of the Americas, on the theme of "Empathy in Action," featuring stories from Mayor Michael Hancock, poet Suzi Q Smith, writer & thinker Brenton Weyi and many other local storytellers.
