A couple of weeks ago a new gallery opened at the Museum of Croydon, which doubles the museum’s public area on level 1 of the Clocktower. It’s lovely to see this newly renovated space up and running again after so many years closed to visitors.

The launch exhibition for this new gallery, which opened to tie in with Black History Month, is called ‘The Sound of Croydon’ and celebrates the life of arguably Croydon’s most famous Victorian: the Black British composer Samuel Coleridge-Taylor.

As I’m sure you already know, this year is 150 years since Coleridge-Taylor’s birth and there have been a variety of music and art events running in his honour since the summer, culminating in this new exhibition which is open until the end of January.

Why celebrate Coleridge-Taylor? Well, he was a pioneer in classical music and recognised as a musical genius by his peers, achieving extraordinary things in his short life despite the racial barriers he had to overcome (remember this was Victorian England). By his mid-twenties Coleridge-Taylor was famous internationally on the classical music scene. Born to an English mother and a father from Sierra Leone, Coleridge-Taylor often explored themes in his music drawn from his African heritage, weaving them with more European traditions.

With my graphic designer hat on, I had the pleasure of working with the Museum team and the curator Natalie Mitchell to bring the exhibition to life. Early on in the process Natalie and the team showed me a photo of Coleridge-Taylor from Croydon’s Archives (shown above), where he’s seated at his piano in his living room surrounded by a backdrop of heavily patterned wallpaper and framed photos.

An important aim of the exhibition is inclusivity, and thus we wanted to avoid the sterile and quiet spaces of many galleries that can feel exclusionary to first-time gallery goers. We used the photo as inspiration, and the aesthetic for the exhibition space became a welcoming living room, where we hope visitors feel at home when entering.

The walls are covered in a Victorian-esque wallpaper, and the exhibition’s photos sitting in framed borders, are hung haphazardly across the walls to echo Coleridge-Taylor’s living room. In the centre of the room stands a piano that visitors (talented or otherwise) can play (cue my seven-year-old and her friend driving the invigilator to distraction on opening day!), as well as sofas to sit and relax on.

The exhibition text takes you on a journey through Coleridge-Taylor’s life and beyond, from his childhood in Croydon, his studies at the Royal College of Music and his breakthrough work ‘Hiawatha’, to international recognition, his commitment to anti-racist movements and his untimely death. The exhibition finally examines his legacy through his daughter Avril Gwendolen Coleridge-Taylor (herself a trailblazing pianist, composer and conductor), as well as other artists who have discovered his remarkable story many years later, including a commission by Croydon’s Talawa Theatre in 2023 as part of the London Borough of Culture celebrations.

I asked the exhibition curator, Natalie Mitchell, what it means for them (and indeed for heritage in Croydon) to bring an exhibition about Coleridge-Taylor to the Museum of Croydon.

Natalie: It means a lot – I grew up in Croydon and grew up knowing some things about Coleridge-Taylor, as people do in our town, but I never really felt like I got taught much about him. As someone who is Black there’s a lot of history about Black people that should be seen as important, that isn’t always brought to the fore. So to be able to bring an exhibition to life and not only help other people learn about Coleridge-Taylor but learn more about him myself – to be able to go into his archives, to be able to visit and talk to people about the archive at the Royal Albert Hall, to see pictures of his family, and to really get to know the man behind this incredible talent – has been a dream. Then to be able to share that with other people and to say, this Black man from Croydon made it, and made something incredible of himself, which will hopefully inspire young people of today. Yes, it’s been a real honour.

‘The Sound of Croydon: Celebrating Samuel Coleridge-Taylor’ runs until 31 January 2026 at the Museum of Croydon on Level 1 of Croydon Clocktower – open Wednesday to Saturday, 10am to 4.30pm.

Find out about upcoming events connected to the exhibition on the Museum’s website or Instagram.

Header image, courtesy of Museum of Croydon (photo credit: Royal College of Music / ArenaPAL ); photo of Coleridge-Taylor at his piano, courtesy of Croydon Archives, PH/97/15797 Pictorial Press [1891-1912]; portrait of Natalie Mitchell at the exhibition (above), courtesy of the curator; other exhibition images by the Croydonist.

Posted by Julia