Inspired by his own front room in his family’s home in Clapton, where Michael McMillan grew up in the seventies, this colourful and vibrant installation forms a central part of Museum of the Home’s recent Real Rooms project, revealing new stories that better represent the varied communities in the East London area
First off Michael, I loved the room you curated, it’s so bright, lively and joyful. Does that mirror your experience of growing up in East London?
I’m glad you like the Front Room installation, which is representative of the one we had in our house in Clapton. It’s where my mum, like many Caribbean women of the time, felt free to express her feminine style in how it was dressed and decorated. The front room emanates from the Victorian parlour with its ideals of respectability, which is why my mum always made sure we were on our best behaviour when we were allowed in there.
It’s also representative of the wider area, especially Dalston, where my mum frequently came to buy Caribbean groceries in Ridley Road market, as I still do today. Moreover, Dalston and the surrounding area was where a number of famous clubs were located, namely Four Aces and Cubies, while nearby on London Fields was All Nations.
How would you describe your family?
I’d describe my family as Caribbean-British, and I am the eldest of four siblings – two sisters and a brother. We were all born and raised in the UK, so we would describe ourselves as black British too.
Growing up, I didn’t realise that my family was working class or that we were poor, because all the families we associated with struggled with some degree of poverty. Like many migrant families, my parents were aspirational, giving us opportunities they didn’t have themselves, such as doing well educationally, getting good jobs and working hard. All four of us have achieved their aspirations and have passed those values on to our respective children. As an artist, writer and academic, I would describe myself now as having a middle class lifestyle, however, I haven’t forgotten my working class roots.
Whereabouts in the Caribbean did your parents come from?
Both my parents, now deceased, came from St Vincent & the Grenadines. They came to Britain as part of the post-war Caribbean migration in 1960, and though they knew each other ‘back home’, they reconnected as adults and got married.
They were part of the so-called ‘Windrush’ generation; so called because as a generic term it ignores the generational differences between post-war Caribbean migrants. For instance, neither of my parents served during the Second World War. Moreover, there is a marked difference between those who came to Britain via ship and those via plane. Also, those who have been treated as illegal immigrants in the ‘Windrush Scandal’ came to Britain as children, not adults, and apart from spending most of their lives in the UK, paying taxes and contributing to the society, they are being deported to countries they don’t know.
When they came to the UK, what were their first impressions?
Like many post-war Caribbean migrants, my parents came to Britain because they were invited as Commonwealth citizens of the former British Empire, to help rebuild the ‘Mother Country’ that had been ruined by the Second World War. They were also seeking better opportunities, like immigrants and refugees today, because their country’s economy had been decimated by conflict.
For most, their initial impressions were that the climate was cold, like the people. But through their resilience, they had to bury that trauma and try hard to make do until they could do better. This included housing, as many, because of racist landlords and landladies, were forced in live in cramped one-room accommodation. Because they couldn’t get loans from banks, they used the ‘pardner hand’ (collective micro-saving) to save for a deposit on a house. Indeed, post-war Caribbean migrants were one of the first to own properties in towns and cities across Britain where they settled. Nevertheless, not everyone could afford to buy a house, and many rented council housing.
How did the house in Clapton come about?
Our family initially moved to London from High Wycombe, where many Vincentians (St Vincent & the Grenadines) settled. At first, the six of us lived in three-rooms in a large tenement house with five other families on Evering Road. Those families were evicted, and we were rehoused in a council flat on De Beauvoir Estate in Hoxton. My parents eventually bought an Edwardian terraced house on Mount Pleasant Lane, Clapton, built in the late 19th or early 20th century. They bought it for a couple of thousand in the early 1970s, and we sold it for hundreds of thousands after our parents passed away.
Is it still there and if so, have you revisited it?
I live down the road on Riverside Close on the banks of the River Lea, a new build since 1987, and pass the house we lived in since 1973 on most days. We sold it to a white middle class family, who ironically were probably of a similar social background of those who fled, the ‘white flight’ of the 1960s, when Caribbean migrants first arrived in the area. Today, the children of those migrant and working class families who settled during that era are now displaced; unable to afford the obscene property prices that marks gentrification.
What are your earliest memories of being in that house?
We were lucky in that we had space for a living room as well as a front room, which were distinct from each other. The living room was where we came together as a family to socialise, chat, play games, eat and watch TV. Whereas the front room was a more formal space, always ready to receive and entertain guests and unexpected visitors.
The front room was therefore the public space in the private domain, where the family could show off and perform to the outside world how they wanted to be seen. Therefore, no matter how poor your family was, if the front room looked good, then you were respectable.
Growing up, though I was in awe of the front room decoration and style, I did think it was kitsch and reminded me of the coloniality my parents brought from the Caribbean. Nevertheless, I knew that my parents took pride in their front room and that they worked and saved hard to afford nice things.
Being the eldest, my parents trusted me that I would leave the front room how I found it. I was fascinated with photographs of their family and friends in framed portraits on the walls and in photo albums. Through these images I imagined where my parents came from, their lives before having us, their friendships as young people and family resemblances.
Was there one object or piece of furniture that had a special resonance for you?
I was fascinated by the radiogram, which comprised of a turntable and radio housed in a wooden veneer cabinet, and sometimes included a compartment for drinks. It was what Caribbean migrants used to entertain themselves in the home, hosting house and blues parties, with music on vinyl records. It was especially important, as they were not welcome in British clubs and pubs. Music included jazz like Fats Domino, ska like Millie Small, reggae like Desmond Dekker, soul like Marvin Gaye and calypso like Mighty Sparrow. On a Sunday, meanwhile, it was common to hear gospel music such as Mahalia Jackson or the country & western singer Jim Reeves. My parents had an eclectic vinyl collection, which also included Rock n Roll like Elvis Presley or pop like The Beatles or Lulu.
Apart from a faint signal from Radio Luxembourg, we rarely heard black music on the radio, though before I was allowed out to rave, I would tune into Greg Edwards’ Soul Spectrum and David Rodigan’s Roots Rockers reggae programme on Capital Radio on a Saturday night. There was also Tony Williams and Steve Bernard’s reggae programmes and Alex Pascal’s Black Londoners magazine programme on BBC Radio London on Sunday afternoons. I escaped getting down to Parliament’s funk, shuffling with James Brown and ‘skanking’ to Dennis Brown, then my dad would shout, ‘Turn down dat buff buff music, there’s no rasta’s livin’ here’.
How do you view Hackney today, compared with when you were growing up?
During the 1970s and 1980s, Hackney was represented in the mainstream media as a deprived crime-infested inner-city area, like Brixton, Peckham or Tottenham, because this was where migrant and working class communities largely lived. Because of gentrification (colonisation), these areas have now become fashionable, theme parks for white middle class yuppies, who would never have ventured there back in the day. Yet the cultural vibrancy that these communities created in areas like Dalston and Hoxton that is now exploited through gentrification has not been fully acknowledged and remembered.
Can you tell us a bit about how The Front Room installation came about?
It was initially a 2005 immersive exhibition at the Geffrye Museum (as The Museum of the Home was known as back then) called The West Indian Front Room: Memories and impressions of Black British Homes. This included archive photography, oral histories and films via interactive multi-media with The Front Room as a central installation. It was the most successful exhibition at the museum with over 35,000 visitors, because it had a cross-cultural appeal beyond the Black experience, especially with other migrant and white working class communities. This success led to a BBC4 documentary, subsequent international iterations and there is also a book.
Tell us more about its current guise in the revamped Rooms Through Time gallery at the Museum of the Home?
Given The Front Room’s popular cross-cultural appeal, it was agreed with the Museum of the Home that it would be part of their reopening in summer 2021 as a permanent installation. The recent redesign of the Rooms Through Time gallery, which includes The Front Room, was inspired by my curatorial approach towards the room as an interactive installation rather than a static museum display. New installations in the gallery include a Jewish tenement from 1911, the bedroom of an Irish couple in the 1950s as they get ready to go out, a British-Vietnamese contemporary kitchen complete with smells and sounds and a Future Room that explores how climate change, social inequality and technological advances could effect our living spaces.
How did you go about selecting which objects would feature in the room?
Curating The Front Room over such an extended period means I have accumulated a substantial amount of objects, some bought and some donated, from families, whose post-war Caribbean migrant parents have passed away.
Every iteration of The Front Room is exciting, because it’s like moving into a new home. The process begins with the design and building the room, which includes skirting boards, cornicing, ceiling etc. Then follows decoration including selection of period appropriate and culturally relevant wallpaper, carpet, light fittings and other fixtures like an analogue telephone. There are also key iconic items of furniture: upholstered or faux leather sofas (plastic covering has not been easy to recreate in the UK), glass cabinet, sideboard, bookshelf, side tables, television, dining table and of course, the radiogram with vinyl records as mentioned above. Wall-hangings include framed portraits, souvenirs like the velour black scroll, and religious pictures including The Last Supper. There are also soft furnishings like crochet doilies (I have my mum’s collection and others donated to me) as well as ornaments like the blow-glass fish, artificial flowers, and crockery and glassware.
Finally, why do you think the installation has been such an enduring success?
Personally, I am fascinated by The Front Room’s material culture, and the stories, memories and emotions that objects in it evoke and invoke. Also through the oral histories of people, I am always learning something new and I hope visitors to the museum come away feeling that too.
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