The Way We Live

80 years ago, Plymouth was emerging from the shadow of the Blitz. Planner Patrick Abercrombie and Plymouth City Engineer and Surveyor James Paton Watson’s ‘A Plan for Plymouth’ (1943) had outlined ambitious ideas for the rebuilding of the city, while Jill Craigie’s film ‘The Way We Live’ (1946) was showing what post-war family life looked like, and had taken a radical approach by engaging local residents rather than professional actors to ask questions about how people wanted to live.

Now, in 2026, the city stands on the threshold of another era of major regeneration – one that isn’t just thinking about years but decades. As Plymouth embarks on this defining new chapter The Way We Live takes its name and spirit from Craigie's film to explores ideas of home, housing and community and consider the wider debate about how we want to live in the future.

Curator Beth Hughes has brought together work by a number of 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 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. New commissions by emerging photographers Abril Sigle, Flora Tye and Josh Huxham exploring ideas of home through their creative practice will feature in Active Archives.

A large-scale event programme inspired by the exhibition will feature everything from den building, drawing and shadow puppet making to creative workshops and architecture tours of Plymouth’s city centre.