An emergent sense of place: Examining the socio-cultural impact and experiential change of the new London museum in Smithfield

Abstract

In 2026 the London Museum opens in former market buildings in Smithfield, a historic working district on the edge of the City of London. The Museum’s £437m relocation is a major component of a culture-led development scheme, one that is radically transforming the local area. This interdisciplinary research interrogates what constitutes the identity and social experience of an area undergoing accelerated change, a ‘sense of place’ that I conceptualise as simultaneously socio-cultural, political, embodied, and imagined. This frames an analysis of how a museum that is both an instrument and agent of change can establish an equitable relationship with its new locality. Undertaken between 2020-2024 as a Collaborative Doctoral Award with the London Museum, this study follows a grounded theory approach, engaging with the diverse experiences of Smithfield’s social actors as well as the strategies of municipal and institutional agents. I apply a mixed methodology incorporating document analysis, ethnographic observation, walking interviews, and participatory workshops. This thesis argues that local identity and experience is relationally mediated by shared material, sensory, and imagined cues, produced through the rhythmic expression of power over time, and given meaning through real-and-imagined encounters. My research reveals the tangible and intangible effects of culture-led development processes, and their multiple aesthetic and experiential strategies of commodification and control. Ultimately, I argue for the reconceptualisation of a ‘sense of place’ into a dynamic concept that accounts for the inter-dependence of place and processes of urban change, the multiplicity of experience, and the uneven and negotiated effects of globalised capitalism. Drawing together literature from sociology, urban studies, and museum studies, I make key methodological, theoretical, and practical contributions to researching cultureled development. Respectively, these comprise the adaptation of Lefebvre’s (2004) rhythmanalytical method through Massey’s (1991) notion of place as process, a theory of accommodation within senses of place, and the development of a strategic blueprint for equitable museum approaches to new local contexts. The latter is disseminated as a research output through an online resource for museum professionals.