‘Young people can come and experience life-changing moments’: Jos Caselli-Hayford at V&A East, a new museum for Generation Z | Art and design

WWhen Gus Casely-Hayford was a child, his sister Margaret took him to the British Museum. He didn’t always enjoy museums: “As much as I was drawn to them, they weren’t places I felt completely welcome in,” he says, especially since they rarely told the stories of black Britons like his. But Margaret was determined. “She told me that these spaces belong to all of us. They may not be telling our stories, but she was telling me, ‘This is something you can change.'”

Now, as director of the V&A East, he is building a space “where young people can come and experience those transformative, life-changing moments”. These are the grand ambitions of the project located across two sites in London’s Olympic Park: the V&A Store, which opened in May this year and has already exceeded its visitor target in a third of the time expected, and the V&A Museum East, an exhibition and exhibition space housed within a five-storey building designed by Irish architects O’Donnell & Tuomey on the Stratford waterfront. The aim, says Tristram Hunt, director of the V&A, is “to open the V&A’s collection in new ways to audiences who have historically been underserved by major cultural institutions.”

After years of delay, which Casley-Hayford attributes to “the pandemic… labor supply issues” and the enormous challenge of launching “two buildings of this level of complexity,” the museum site will finally open its doors to the public on April 18 next year. It is a key part of East Bank, London’s £1.1 billion cultural and educational district designed to transform the former Olympic neighbourhoods, and is what Hunt calls “a crucial element of the legacy of London 2012”. The V&A East is located alongside Sadler’s Wells East, the London College of Fashion, UCL East and the BBC Music Studios. What slice of the pie does the V&A get from the Department for Digital, Culture, Media and Sport? “Very generous,” Caselli-Hayford responds.

The director is charming and cheerful, but it’s his passion for the arts that makes the biggest impression when I meet him in the V&A store, surrounded by a collection of references from football shirts to bikes and vases left by local schoolchildren. His mission at V&A East was to make it a welcoming and inspiring place for any creatively minded young person who might not yet be ready to take in the South Kensington Victoria and Albert Foundation, the organisation’s parent organisation, but which grew out of the V&A Youth, aimed at children under 14. David Bailey.” Cassilly-Hayford says he is determined to find “equivalents” among the younger generations and make the Victoria and Albert Museum in the East their access point to the arts. “You see a lot of young people who are filled with this creative passion, but they don’t necessarily feel at home in museums.”

To address this problem, over the past five years, he has personally visited every high school in the four boroughs surrounding the site, while the broader project consulted some 30,000 young people, influencing every aspect of the institution, from the permanent collection to the staff uniform (a burgundy waistcoat with a fitted back that can be customized to allow self-expression). Project staffing also reflects the demographic complexity of the area. “We have made a huge effort to integrate V&A East into local communities,” says Casely-Hayford. “This is a space that belongs to them. These are groups that belong to all of us. To hear them reflect their passions, their aspirations, their goals, in their own terms, is very gratifying.”

So what will he offer? “We have radically reinterpreted the V&A’s world-class collections through a contemporary lens, allowing us to explore themes that matter to our audiences, such as representation, identity, wellbeing, craft practice and social justice,” says Hunt. The V&A East Museum’s permanent collection is called Why We Make. “Before we walk or talk, we create,” says Caselli-Hayford. “It’s a drive shared by all cultures and throughout human history.”

The collection consists of approximately 500 pieces from more than 200 specialists in more than 60 countries. One is a piece by Biscilla Noah, a Spanish potter from Ecuadorian Guinea, which Casselli Hayford describes as “absolutely gorgeous.” There will also be a pink dress by local designer Molly Goddard, and textiles by post-war Trinidadian designer Althea McNish, “objects that tell the story of human creativity through all the different media that the V&A is famous for.” V&A East will be unusually diverse, says Caselli-Hayford. “These different components of the intellectual DNA inform all national museums. The idea that we should not be engaged in trying to make our audiences as broad, diverse and global as possible seems to run counter to that.”

There will also be temporary exhibitions, the first called The Music Is Black, a journey through 125 years of black British music history, exploring genres from calypso and hip-hop to reggae and drill. Casely-Hayford didn’t go into detail about what’s in the exhibit, but Seal, Shirley Bassey, Stormzy and Little Simz will all appear in some way, along with the first guitar ever owned by Joan Armatrading, the director’s “personal hero.”

As optimistic as this all sounds, how will Cassilly-Hayford address the larger issues facing museums? He has been a leading voice on the return of looted artefacts, a problem faced by the Victoria and Albert Museum. “I am very proud that the V&A was among a number of museums to return pieces, particularly the program we were involved in with Ghana,” he says. “We are limited by law in the ways in which we can handle these collections, so they are being returned on loan, and are on display in the Manhyia Palace Museum at this very moment.”

On the issue of ethical funding (since the V&A East, like many museums, will use corporate sponsorship to help pay for some temporary exhibitions), it is less definitive. Some museum representatives dismissed objections to museums taking money from companies that pollute the environment or worse as “relentless negativity.” “Ethical funding is something that matters to everyone who works in museums,” says Caselli-Hayford. “And of course, we like to be very meticulous about any institution, company or partner we deal with.”

He is a descendant of the Cassilly-Hayford family, a prominent British-Ghanaian family descended from J. E. Cassilly-Hayford, a 19th-century politician and writer who was an advocate of African nationalism. His Ghanaian father, Victor, was a trained lawyer and worked as an accountant, and his Sierra Leonean mother, Ransolina, worked for the British Council. They were both immigrants to Britain.

His older siblings were all high achievers – his sister Margaret was chancellor of Coventry University, and his brother Peter was an executive producer of the BBC’s Panorama programme. Another brother Joe, who died of cancer in 2019 aged 62, was a pioneering fashion designer, and the focal point of Somerset House’s 2023 exhibition on black fashion, The Missing Thread. Casselli Hayford gets emotional when talking about it. “I absolutely adored him, he was my inspiration,” he says. “One day I was looking at my bookshelves. I have a bunch of really old art books and when I opened them, every one of them was a gift from him.”

Casselli Hayford has had a long and varied career, presenting the BBC series The Lost Kingdoms of Africa, writing books on West African art, and, before joining the Victoria and Albert Museum in the East, serving as director of the Smithsonian’s National Museum of African Art in Washington, D.C. (He says it “breaks my heart” to see the Trumpian persecution of the works of his former colleagues). His first start in the museum sector came after he earned a PhD in African history from SOAS University in London and joined the education department at the British Museum, the same place where Margaret told him he could make a change.

While there he organized Africa 05, the largest African arts season ever hosted by Britain, in which 150 cultural institutions participated “to contribute to a particular moment in 2005 when we celebrated Africa and its history”. This extravaganza was also disruptive to the sector. “Museums are inherently conservative,” says Caselli-Hayford. “Not only do they preserve the past. But many people inside the museums embody aspects of it.” What did you learn from accomplishing this feat? “That you can make changes that seem impossible.”

The V&A describes the East as the greatest project of his career, in achieving its goal of making these institutions that were founded “for us all” globally accessible. “These are spaces that tell our stories through the best things humanity has ever created,” he says. “The arts are about leaving a mark that we hope will outlast us. And one of the few ways we can find out what others feel, rather than thinking on our own, is through creativity. Museums are repositories of those finest impulses.”