In April we welcome a new artist in residence to Room to Breathe: the multimedia artist Shorsh Saleh. This blog profiles the exhibition, which features the photographs of Magnum photographer Chris Steele-Perkins, a long-term supporter of the Migration Museum. He wants Migrants: The Story of Us All to be seen as an alternative history of the world, in which humans migrate for a wide range of reasons: not just because of civil war, or poverty or climate change but also out of curiosity and a sense of adventure. Migration, forced and unforced, out of need or avarice or plain curiosity, is above anything else ordinary.

His thesis is that the role of migration in human history has often been underplayed, overlooked or misunderstood. They were often gone for years, leaving wives and families to cope alone and rely on remittances that didn’t always come. Along the way, Miller dispels some popular myths, such as the idea that the Neanderthals were less intelligent than modern humans. Packed with emotion and reminding us of things once known and half-remembered, they resemble frames from a film whose complex whole we cannot see. An exhibition guide to help you get the most of Taking Care of Business when visiting with your students.But something much deeper, more fundamental, about who we are as human beings… Some of us are very vocal on the subject. Agadez, the legendary gateway to the desert, has become a transit city for many migrants trying to reach Libya to cross the Mediterranean to Italy. The story brings this danger to the table with an incredible aesthetic—colour over a very high-pitched black.

The cultural opprobrium attached to immigration has been building at least since Aristotle’s day, according to former BBC journalist Sam Miller’s flawed, fascinating stab at a global history of migration. He is the author of Impossible Journeys, There and Back Again: In the Footsteps of JRR Tolkien and The Favourite. Most of the historic episodes covered are Euro- or Americo-centric: it is pejorative western narratives about migration that he is most keen to confront.Wide-lens history dominates Migrants but it’s in a close-focus portrait of the actor and dancer Josephine Baker that Miller excels. SAM Miller’s special subject speaks to me as one who followed – with family – criss-crossing the oceans over generations. The Migration Museum has two locations: in Lewisham, south-east London; and a new pop-up museum in Leeds. Hanaa's migration story is one of empowerment, of how migration has enabled her to overcome a disability, move forward and be free. The book is a vast work of synthesis, and Miller's choices of which episodes to highlight are both expected and distinctive, as any panoramic view of history must be.

Clive Jacobs is a serial entrepreneur and businessman who has created and invested in businesses for over 30 years. Over the past year, young people from across Lewisham have been designing exhibits responding to what migration means to them as part of Moving Stories: Lewisham, a creative competition we ran during Borough of Culture, supported by Landsec. But many children welcome opportunities to talk about things that matter, and do so with unexpected insight…There’s a timeless sense of significance about these otherworldly spreads. He covers migration from pre-historic days, Biblical times and charts the layers of overlapping movements of population out of Africa, across the Middle East, Asia, Europe and the Americas. Studying the history of migration will help you think about today’s arguments in context, with evidence, so that you can make informed judgements that learn from history.It is topical and moving exploring loss and hope as well as being a tribute to those who have to leave their homelands and have the courage to make this often hazardous journey to try to make a better life for them and their families. International Migrants Day is an opportunity to promote an informed and balanced conversation on migration and to share the stories, experiences, aspirations of migrants in their communities. This series of animated video stories aim to amplify the stories of migrants and their families, of the communities that welcome them and the conversations they have along the way. When we migrate we often leave our loved ones behind and for many migrants this separation can be difficult to overcome.