We visit the new Bristol local history museum that's inside a shipping container

A museum has opened inside a shipping container to tell the local history and heritage of a community in south Bristol.  

The Museum of Totterdown has been collecting stories from both present and former residents about the area.

Led by former Totterdown local John O’Connor, the museum grew out of archives developed by the Road Project he established in 2018.  

The project marked the anniversary of the demolition of much of Totterdown by Bristol City Council to make way for a never-to-be-built expressway ring road and ‘spaghetti junction’ interchange.  

The first exhibition in the museum is ‘Foundland’ by Maria Mochnacz, which runs until tomorrow (25 November). 

Well known for her photography work with singer PJ Harvey, Mochnacz is a Totterdown artist who for decades has been collecting items people throw away, archiving them into 60 categories.  

Maria’s exhibition includes a collection of gloves she has picked up off the streets. Filing cabinets in the back of the shipping container are full of other items she has found, including broken CDs, used tablet wrappers and lost ear rings.      

John said: “We recognise that history is a continuum, we’re all part of history and 100 years from now people will look back to now and see that as quite exotic and in the past. 

“So the concept of what a museum is is complicated and we want to challenge what people’s perceptions are of a museum.”     

In the long-term, John hopes that as well being an archive of the history of Totterdown, it can also be used to faciliate and help people research their own homes and streets.  

The shipping container is situated on ‘Zone A’ on Firfield Street, just off Wells Road. A small patch of green space, Zone A has been designated as a community space and in the past there were plans for a community centre there that didn’t come to fruition. 

“I have a creative angle to this but I’m also really interested and fascinated by the extraordinary history of Totterdown,” added John, who lives in Whitchurch but before that was a Totterdown resident for 20 years.  

On the museum’s future, he said: “We are on a learning curve and a journey to find out how we can best maximise this rusty old tin box.

“It feels like it has momentum and a lot of interest generated around Totterdown. 

“Arts and heritage appeal to a cross-section of the community and this is certainly a historic neighbourhood so there’s lots of possibility for cross-over between cultural and heritage initiatives.”