London’s V&A Storehouse

The OCA Student Association (OCASA)’s recent announcement of the launch of OCA’s Cabinet of Curiosity – A collaborative Project in July this year during the Student Voice Festival 2025, has aligned nicely with the recent launch and opening of the V & A East Storehouse, that has just opened its doors to the public in Hackney Wick, London. 

As an artist researcher the excitement of encountering such a public facing resource with the additional opportunity to access, view and perhaps even touch one or two selected items from a vast catalogue of known/unknown objects from the V and A archived collection, immediately took me to a place within my imagination, where new possibilities and correspondences with objects could fuel and feed new and existing creative ideas.

The V & A East Storehouse are offering an Order an object service online where you can arrange, at least two weeks in advance, to select, view and visit selected objects from their collections. All appointments are free and you can select a preferred date and time for your visit. A member of the Collections Access team will bring out your selected object (s) and in addition to that, should you wish, you can also join an Object Encounter , another free group session, to look at different highlighted objects housed in the Storehouse or the V & A main collection in Kensington. In terms of primary research, there is nothing quite like getting up close to an object of interest. 

Whilst you have been asked in the first instance to choose and photograph a personal artifact as well as write 200 words to tell its story for the OCA’s Cabinet of Curiosity, your creative experience could be expanded further with a visit to the V & A East Storehouse to contemplate what a newly discovered object is or might be in today’s everyday culture.

Find out more about the V&A Storehouse here.

Hayley will be offering a workshop titled A space for Imagination: Working with/from/through objects as part of the Student Voice Festival on Thursday 17th July.

Find out more about the Student Voice Festival here.