Major autumn/winter exhibition asks, ‘how do we want to live?’
20 September 2026
A new exhibition opening at The Box Plymouth on Saturday 24 October 2026 will explore the changing meaning of home, housing and community 80 years after Plymouth’s post-war reconstruction.
The Box Plymouth, the 2026 Art Fund Museum of the Year, is exploring one of the most fundamental questions of modern life – how do we want to live? – this autumn/winter with a programme focused on home, housing and community. At its heart, it asks what makes a home – and who gets the opportunity to feel safe, secure and valued where they live.
Home is a right not a privilege. That is the theme that sits at the heart of The Way We Live; a major exhibition running from 24 October 2026-21 February 2027 that brings together contemporary art, sculpture, installation, painting, photography and film plus material from The Box’s historic collections and archives.
As Plymouth prepares to build 10,000 new homes, the exhibition asks the same question that the city asked itself 80 years go as it rebuilt from the devastation of the Blitz: who is this future being built for? It’s a question with national resonance too. From the Grenfell tower to today’s housing crisis, Britain is still asking who gets to feel safe and valued in their own home and who is left on the margins.
80 years ago, in the aftermath of the Second World War, Plymouth was embarking on an ambitious plan to rebuild. 'A Plan for Plymouth', developed by planner Patrick Abercrombie and City Engineer and Surveyor James Paton Watson, proposed a radical rethinking of the city's streets, homes and neighbourhoods.
At the same time, filmmaker Jill Craigie was making 'The Way We Live', a provocative 1946 semi-documentary inspired by the rebuilding plans. Rather than using professional actors, Craigie worked with local residents to explore questions about how people wanted to live. The film featured around 3,000 non-professional actors. The exhibition takes its name and its spirit from her film, opening up a wider conversation about how we live today, and how decisions about homes and neighbourhoods shape people’s lives, identities, and sense of belonging.
The exhibition arrives at a significant moment for Plymouth. As the city enters its next chapter of regeneration curator Beth Hughes brings together work by leading contemporary artists including Do Ho Suh, Rachel Whiteread, Jasleen Kaur, Caroline Walker, Anne Tallentire, Hetain Patel, Andrea Luka Zimmerman and Gavin Turk, alongside new commissions by photographer Hannah Starkey and artist Jacqui Poncelet.
The artists all approach the idea of home from different perspectives, revealing it to be much more than a physical space; a place where creativity and identity take shape, where memories are made and belonging is established – as well as a space shaped by wider social and political forces.
Do Ho Suh's New York City Apartment explores the relationship between memory, identity and place, while Rachel Whiteread's cast of a mattress transforms an everyday domestic object into something monumental. A new version of Jonathan Baldock’s It’s My House and I live Here reflects on the complex relationship between home and belonging as limbs, ears and lips burst out of its brick-built tower, while Permindar Kaur’s Washing Line Bed uses a nostalgic setting to convey ideas around community and aspiration.
Other works consider the sights, sounds, smells and textures of home, the impact of technology on domestic life, and the ways that our homes can become expressions of who we are.
Archival images that highlight the architecture of houses in Plymouth and people in their homes, as well as paintings by John Bratby and Josef Herman, all from The Box’s collections, help to explore the exhibition themes further.
Alongside the incredible contemporary art, a newly rescanned and restored version of Jill Craigie's 'The Way We Live' will be screened in the Media Lab alongside rare behind-the-scenes footage and other archival materials.
In the Bridge Gallery, a display drawn from the archives will explore 'A Plan For Plymouth' and the changes this radical plan brought to the city, alongside recent developments, the City Living Framework and community-led approaches, while new commissions by emerging photographers Abril Sigle, Flora Tye and Josh Huxham exploring ideas of home through their creative practice will feature in the Active Archives space.
A large-scale event programme inspired by The Way We Live will feature everything from den building, drawing and shadow puppet making to creative workshops and architecture tours of the city centre.
Rebecca Bridgman, Head of Collections and Programme at The Box Plymouth, said:
80 years ago, Plymouth was asking fundamental questions about what its future could look like. Today, as the city enters another period of significant change, those questions feel remarkably relevant.
Grenfell by Steve McQueen, which will be on show at the same time, creates a powerful dialogue around the idea of home and the devastating consequences that can occur when people aren’t adequately protected in the places where they live, while The Way We Live offers a chance to reflect on the decisions that shaped the city after the Second World War, understand the experiences of those who’ve lived here, and think about what comes next.
Together, both exhibitions and their associated displays and events ask us to think about home not simply as a physical space, but as a fundamental part of our identity, wellbeing and sense of belonging. They also raise questions about the kind of homes and neighbourhoods we want to create for the future, and the responsibility we have to make sure people can feel safe and valued in the places they live.
The Way We Live runs from Saturday 24 October 2026 until Sunday 21 February 2027.
Image credits
Ryan Gander, I is... (xi), 2014. Photographed inside at Palais de Tokyo, 2014-2015. Courtesy the artist.
'A Plan for Plymouth', courtesy of The Box Plymouth.
Caroline Walker, Dolls House, 2026, © the artist. Photo by Isla Macer Law.
Permindar Kaur, Washing Line Bed, 2024-2025. Image by Richard Davies.