Local to Global
Digitally recording, sharing, teaching the refugee and immigrant contribution to British society since 1900
UK Population statistics:
2024 estimated 20% of all UK & 40% of all Londoners born abroad - Immigrants.
Conversations about identity and coexistence will continue to be more relevant year on year.
Ben Uri Research and Dissemination Institute
WHY
2024: UK population is estimated to be 20% immigrant 2024: London population is estimated to be 40% immigrant
Ben Uri 110 Years:
1915: A new institution founded in Whitechapel by Lazar Berson, an immigrant Russian born Jewish artist from Paris whose extraordinarily ambitious vision was a National Jewish Art Museum.
1995: After 80 years being the centre of London’s Jewish community’s cultural arena it lost its gallery in Central London and was only kept alive by the belief of its Trustees.
2000: A new board, a new future in the centre of Britain’s mainstream museum sector representing the Jewish community rather than being focussed on and in it.
2002: A new home – a gallery in Boundary Road off the ‘Beatles’ famous Abbey Road
2015: Out of Chaos - our hugely successful centenary exhibition at Somerset House generously funded by the National Heritage Lottery Fund
2016: A new future following our critical analysis that a museum building in one of central London’s museum sectors will prove unsustainable even if £30+m capital could be raised.
2018: A new detailed Sustainability and Public Benefit Strategic Plan was published redrawing how small and medium sized museums can generate distinctive public benefit. The prescient strategy repositioned Ben Uri to focus on
Clare Winsten (1894-1989)
Born: Kingdom of Romania
Year of Migration: 1902
Untitled (Vorticist Figures), c.1911-12
academic research on the wide immigrant contribution to British visual culture since 1900 and be digitally led.
2025: A new web user record broken –40,834 in October compared to 936 in March 2018. This compares to less than 500 physical visitors a month to the Gallery. Online equates to over 500,000 in 2026 with some 40% from abroad. Clear evidence of the transformation from Local to Global.
2026 > A new socially valuable, productive, and expanded hybrid future, building on our DNA, our last 25 years of prioritising and 8 years of recording our research on the Jewish, the refugee and the wide immigrant contribution to British visual culture.
The new Ben Uri Research & Dissemination Institute will digitally record, share, and teach the refugee and wide immigrant contribution to British society since 1900. The deliverables and benefits serve to contextualise the place and the significant, more regularly overlooked and unsung contribution of the 20% of our population who are immigrants.
2050 / 2100 > A world-leading Ben Uri Research Institute recording, sharing, and teaching the refugee and wide immigrant contribution to British society since 1900.
Local (1915) to
Global
(2025)...
We are very proud and excited to announce the final expansion of the museum’s strategic plan, first published in 2018, to formalise the adoption of our core public benefit being within academia and online education - and being fully committed to a digital first future.
We will continue to be a hybrid institution exhibiting challenging and inspiring art, reflecting both our proud Jewish heritage and our current and future, celebrating the contribution of the refugee and wide immigrant communities to our rich and diverse cultural mosaic.
One of the important cultural assets of Ben Uri is our policy to prioritise the stories of the artists and their journey to the UK even over their art.
We live in an ever-increasing digital world dominated by images flashing across our phones, so image recall is more difficult and time for reflection much impaired.
Stories however, particularly exciting often dramatic journeys across borders at times of war or persecution, more easily capture imagination and the recall is much longer.
The unveiling of our next phase of expansion shares with you the detail and rational of our future for the rest of this 21st century and longer.
Tam Joseph (1947-)
Born: Dominica
Year of Migration: 1955
The Hand Made Map of the World, 2013
The Ben Uri Research and Dissemination Institute will extend our current Research Unit’s focus on visual culture to research, consolidate and record the refugee and wide immigrant contribution to British society as a whole since 1900.
20% of the British population / 40% of Londoners are immigrants and their ongoing contribution to the wealth, cultural, scientific and financial, needs to be accurately and proportionately recorded and recognised.
This Institute will provide factual statistics and personal profiles that are designed to be used by schools, universities, scholars, business, politics and press alike as a tool to increase understanding and discredit senseless prejudice mostly based on ignorance of the facts.
This future will fulfil a need within the tool box of much needed social integration in our country and simultaneously fulfil our charity’s educational and public benefit remit.
From There to Here –
Britain’s Gain!
The Ben Uri Research Unit was the starting point in 2018 and today is the successful model for the new Ben Uri Research Institute.
The Research Unit is a unique and important ongoing global initiative that demonstrates just one of many ways Ben Uri uses art differently.
It records the Jewish, the Refugee and the wide Immigrant contribution to British Art since 1900.
Ben Uri offers free online access to over 3300 scholarly researched profiles, principally covering European, Black, and Asian contribution from over 100 countries of birth via buru.org.uk and diaspora-artists.net. Some 20% of Britain’s, and approximately 40% of the London’s, population were born
‘there’ not ‘here’ and continuously enrich our country in many ways, not least the visual arts.
This ongoing research is a distinctive and valuable educational resource used extensively by secondary school and university students, researchers, the art sector, as well as families looking to find out more of their namesakes. Surprise yourself and explore online and discover more about the refugee and immigrant contribution to British art and society by remarkable individuals from over 100 countries of birth.
Next the Ben Uri Research and Dissemination Institute digitally researching, recording, consolidating and teaching the refugee and immigrant contribution to British society since 1900.
Afghanistan Bulgaria Finland Israel Malta Portugal Sudan
Algeria Canada France Italy Mauritius Romania Switzerland
Angola Canary Islands Germany Jamaica Mexico Russia Syria
Argentina Georgia Japan Montserrat Serbia Tanzania
Chile
Australia Ghana Jordan Morocco Sierra Leone Tibet
Austria Greece Kenya Netherlands Singapore Trinidad
Bahamas Grenada Kosovo New Slovakia Tunisia
Bangladesh Grenadines Kuwait Zealand Slovenia Turkey
Barbados Guyana Laos Nigeria South Africa Uganda
Belarus Hungary Latvia Palestine South Korea Ukraine
Belgium India Lebanon Pakistan Spain USA
Bolivia Iran Lithuania Peru Sri Lanka Venezuela
Bosnia Iraq Malaysia Philippines Saint Kitts Vietnam
China Croatia Cyprus Czech Republic Denmark Dominica Egypt Estonia
Brazil Ireland Malawi Poland Saint Lucia Yemen
buru.org.uk diaspora-artists.net
TODAY:
Recording, Sharing and Teaching the Immigrant Contribution to British visual culture since 1900 through 3300 published profiles and another 1800 in the works. See buru.org.uk and diaspora-artists.net
How Ben Uri Uses Art Differently
We prioritise global digital engagement over the physical.
We prioritise artists and their milieu over their artworks.
Why Ben Uri Uses Art Differently
We frame our research within the context of social integration.
The stories of migrations captures imagination beyond the art.
TOMORROW:
Recording, Sharing and Teaching the Immigrant Contribution to British Society since 1900 - launching in 2026
Rationale: Research on its own no longer generates a positive return on investment. Accurate and inaccurate information is widely available online and with the rise of AI, which promises to misinform as much as inform, factual evidence and testimony is essential.
Ben Uri’s academic research needs to be, and is designed to be, easily understood by scholars, students and the general public alike.
Deliverables: Fact not Fiction
Our research is widely used by universities across Britain and abroad, supporting undergraduate, postgraduate and doctoral work across the humanities, with a special focus on bridging the gap between the digital and the physical.
We are developing citizenship modules for schools based on our evidence that a high percentage of superstars and superheroes, in whichever sector of our local communities or national and global societies, are either first or second generation immigrants and often to Britain.
Benefits: We believe that if we can educate children at school, students at university, and the general public at large on the contribution of immigrants to our society, we have a greater chance of minimising racial friction and bigotry based on ignorance and misconception.
12 Key Specialisms within the new Research Institute launching in 2026 are
Visual Arts: Design: Architecture
Media: Technology: Science
Literature: Performance: Music
Business: Sport: Hitler Emigres
2030: The Ben Uri Research and
RESEARCH
and Dissemination Institute
Immigrant
The immigrant contribution to British society: Did you know?
Visual Arts
Francis Bacon (Born 1909, Ireland; migrated to the UK, 1926)
Lucien Freud (Born 1922, Germany; migrated to the UK, 1933)
Frank Auerbach (Born 1931, Germany; migrated to the UK, 1939)
Anish Kapoor (Born 1954, India; migrated to the UK, 1973)
Paula Rego (Born 1935, Portugal; migrated to the UK, 1951)
Oskar Kokoschka (Born 1886, Austria; migrated to the UK, 1938)
Jacob Epstein (Born 1880, USA; migrated to the UK, 1905)
Gustav Metzger (Born 1926, Germany; migrated to the UK, 1939)
Rasheed Araeen (Born 1935, Pakistan; migrated to the UK, 1960s)
Ibrahim El-Salahi (Born 1930, Sudan; migrated to the UK, 1990s)
Design
George Him (Born 1900, Poland; migrated to the UK, 1937) - Graphic Designer
Hans Schleger (Born 1898, Germany; migrated to the UK, 1932) - Graphic Designer
F. H. K. Henrion (Born 1914, Germany; migrated to the UK, 1936) - Graphic Designer
Eva Zeisel (Born 1906, Hungary; migrated to the UK in 1938) - Fashion Designer
Hussein Chalayan (Born 1970, Cyprus; migrated to the UK, 1978) - Fashion Designer
Erdem Moralioglu (Born 1977, Canada; migrated to the UK, 2000) - Fashion Designer
Mary Katrantzou (Born 1983, Greece; migrated to the UK, 2003) - Fashion Designer
Jimmy Choo (Born 1948, Malaysia; migrated to the UK, 1982) - Fashion Designer
Tom Dixon (Born 1959, Tunisia; migrated to the UK, 1963) - Fashion Designer
Zeev Aram (Born 1931, Romania; migrated to the UK, 1957) - Fashion Designer
Architecture
Dame Zaha Hadid (Born 1950, Iraq; migrated to the UK, 1972)
Berthold Lubetkin (Born 1901, Georgia; migrated to the UK, 1931)
Ernő Goldfinger (Born 1902, Hungary; migrated to the UK, 1934)
Erich Mendelsohn (Born 1887, Poland; migrated to the UK, 1933)
Serge Chermayeff (Born 1900, Russia; migrated to the UK, 1910)
Walter Segal (Born 1907, Germany; migrated to the UK, 1936)
Peter Moro (Born 1911, Germany; migrated to the UK in 1936)
Amyas Connell (Born 1901, New Zealand; migrated to the UK in 1930)
George Checkley (Born 1893, New Zealand; migrated to the UK in 1919)
Mouzhan Majidi (Born 1964, Iran; migrated to the UK before 1985)
The immigrant contribution to British society: Did you know?
Literature and Poetry
Salman Rushdie (Born 1947, India; migrated to the UK in 1964) - Author
Kazuo Ishiguro (Born 1954, Japan; migrated to the UK in 1960) - Author
Doris Lessing (Born 1919, Iran; migrated to the UK in 1949) - Author
V. S. Naipaul (Born 1932, Trinidad and Tobago; migrated to the UK in 1950) - Author
Caryl Phillips (Born 1958, Saint Kitts and Nevis; migrated to the UK in 1958) - Author
Grace Nichols (Born 1950, Guyana; migrated to the UK in 1977) - Poet
John Agard (Born 1949, Guyana; migrated to the UK in 1977) - Poet
Linton Kwesi Johnson (Born 1952, Jamaica; migrated to the UK in 1963) - Poet
Ben Okri (Born 1959, Nigeria; migrated to the UK in 1978) - Poet
T. S Elliot (Born 1888, USA; migrated to the UK in 1914) - Poet
Performance
Anton Walbrook (Born 1896, Austria; migrated to the UK in 1936) - Actor
Antony Sher (Born 1949, South Africa; migrated to the UK in 1968) - Actor
Earl Cameron (Born 1917, Bermuda; migrated to the UK in 1939) - Actor
Lucie Mannheim (Born 1899, Germany; migrated to the UK in 1930s) - Actor
Pearl Connor Mogotsi (Born 1924, Trinidad and Tobago; migrated to the UK in 1948) - Actor
Tom Stoppard (Born 1937, Czechia; migrated to the UK in 1946) - Playwright
Mustapha Matura (Born 1939, Trinidad and Tobago; migrated to the UK in 1962) - Playwright
Marie Rambert (Born 1888, Poland, migrated to the UK in 1914) - Ballet Dancer
Rudolf Nureyev (Born 1938, Russia; migrated to the UK in 1961) - Ballet Dancer
Vaslav Nijinsky (Born 1889, Ukraine; migrated to the UK in 1947) - Ballet Dancer
Music Composers
Egon Wellsz (Born 1885, Austria; migrated to the UK in 1938)
Roberto Gerhard (Born 1896, Spain; migrated to the UK in 1939)
Berthold Goldschmidt (Born 1903, Germany; migrated to the UK in 1935)
Hans Gál (Born 1890, Austria; migrated to the UK in 1938)
Joseph Horovitz (Born 1926, Austria; migrated to the UK in 1938)
Franz Reizenstein (Born 1911, Germany; migrated to the UK in 1934)
Errollyn Wallen (Born 1958, Belize; migrated to the UK in 1960)
Sir Andrzej Panufnik (Born 1914, Poland; migrated to the UK in 1954)
Malcolm Williamson (Born 1931, Australia; migrated to the UK in 1950)
Alexander Goehr (Born 1932, Germany; migrated to the UK in 1933)
The immigrant contribution to British society: Did you know?
Media
Sir Alexander Korda (Born 1893, Hungary; migrated to the UK in 1931) - Film Producer
Stanley Kubrick (Born 1928, USA; migrated to the UK in 1961) - Film Director
Ncuti Gatwa (Born 1992, Rwanda; migrated to the UK in 1994) - Film Actor
Audrey Hepburn (Born 1929, Belgium; migrated to the UK in 1937) - Film Actor
Richard Curtis (Born 1956, New Zealand; migrated to the UK in 1972) - Script Writer
Emeric Pressburger (Born 1902, Hungary; migrated to the UK in 1935) - Script Writer
Sydney Newman (Born 1917, Canada; migrated to the UK in 1958) - TV Producer
Lew Grade (Born 1906, Ukraine; migrated to the UK in 1912) - TV Producer
Graham Norton (Born 1963, Ireland; migrated to the UK in 1984) - TV Presenter
Terry Wogan (Born 1938, Ireland; migrated to the UK in 1969) - Radio Presenter
Technology
Ismail Ahmed (born 1960, Somalia; migrated to the UK in 1988)
Taavet Hinrikus (born 1981, Estonia; migrated to the UK in 2006)
Sieng van Tran (born 1975, Vietnam; migrated to the UK in 1981)
Silas Adekunle (born 1991, Nigeria; migrated to the UK circa 2003)
Romi Savova (born 1985; migrated to the UK)
Stephanie Shirley (born 1933, Germany; migrated to the UK, 1939)
Lara Suzuki (born, Brazil; migrated to the UK, circa 2015)
Shrouk El-Attar (born circa 1992, Egypt; migrated to the UK, 2007)
Science / Politics
Ernst Boris Chain (Born 1906 Germany; migrated to the UK in 1933) - Scientist
Hans Krebs (Born 1900, Germany; migrated to the UK in 1933) - Scientist
Max Ferdinand Perutz (Born 1914 Austria; migrated to the UK in 1936) - Scientist
Hugh Blanschko (Born 1900 Germany; migrated to the UK in 1933) - Scientist
Nicholas Kurti (Born 1908 Hungary; migrated to the UK in 1933) - Scientist
Andrew Bonar Law (Born 1858, Canada; migrated to the UK in 1870) - Politician
Robert Maxwell (Born 1923, Czechoslovakia; migrated to the UK in 1940) - Publisher
Alf Dubs (Born 1932, Czechoslovakia; migrated to the UK in 1939) - Politician
Gisela Stuart (Born 1955, Germany; migrated to the UK in 1974) - Politician
Nadhim Zahawi (Born 1967, Iraq; migrated to the UK in 1978) - Politician
Business
Steven Bartlett (Born 1992, Botswana; migrated to the UK in 1994)
Michael Marks (Born circa 1859, Belarus; migrated to the UK in 1882)
Surinder Arora (Born 1958, India; migrated to the UK in 1972)
Montague Burton (Born 1885, Lithuania; migrated to the UK in 1900)
Harry Gordon Selfridge (Born 1858, USA; migrated to the UK in 1906)
The immigrant contribution to British society: Did you know?
Charles Forte (Born 1908, Italy; migrated to the UK in 1911)
Karan Bilimoria (Born 1961, India; migrated to the UK in 1980)
Gulu Lalvani (Born 1939, Pakistan; migrated to the UK circa 1950s)
Lakshmi Mittal (Born 1950, India; migrated to the UK in 1995)
Will Shu (Born 1979, USA; migrated to the UK in 2001)
Sport
Mo Farah (Born 1983, Somalia; migrated to the UK in 1993)
Emma Raducanu (Born 2002, Canada; migrated to the UK in 2004)
Marc Guéhi (Born 2000, Côte d’Ivoire; migrated to the UK in 2001)
Kevin Pietersen (Born 1980, South Africa; migrated to the UK in 2000)
Andrew Strauss (Born 1977, South Africa; migrated to the UK in 1983)
Greg Rusedski (Born 1973, Canada; migrated to the UK in 1995)
Tessa Sanderson (Born 1956, Jamaica; migrated to the UK in 1962)
Manu Tuilagi (Born 19991, Samoa; migrated to the UK c.2004)
Sam Kerr (Born 1993, Australia; migrated to the UK in 2019)
Vivianne Miedema (Born 1996, Netherlands; migrated to the UK in 2017)
Popstars
Freddie Mercury (Born 1946, Zanzibar; migrated to the UK, 1964)
Sade Adu (Born 1959, Nigeria; migrated to the UK, 1964)
M.I.A. (Born 1975, Sri Lanka; migrated to the UK, 1986)
Rita Ora (Born 1990, Kosovo; migrated to the UK, 1991)
Taio Cruz (Born 1980, Brazil; migrated to the UK, childhood)
Beebadoobee (Born 2000, Philippines; migrated to the UK, 2003)
Sinéad O’Connor (Born 1966, Ireland; migrated to the UK, late 1980s)
Enya (Born 1961, Ireland; migrated to the UK, 1983)
Billy Ocean (Born 1950, Trinidad; migrated to the UK, circa 1960)
Mika (Born 1983, Lebanon; migrated to the UK, circa 2003)
Hitler Emigrés
Sigmund Freud (Born 1856, Austria; migrated to the UK, 1938) - Founder of Psychoanalysis
Ernst Gombrich (Born 1909, Austria; migrated to the UK, circa 1937) - Art Historian
Nikolaus Pevsner (Born 1902, Germany; migrated to the UK, 1933) - Art Historian
Max Perutz (Born 1914, Austria; migrated to the UK, 1936) - Molecular biologist
Hans Krebs (Born 1900, Germany; migrated to the UK, 1933) - Biochemist
Kurt Schwitters (Born 1887, Germany; migrated to the UK, 1940) - Artist
Karl Popper (Born 1902, Austria; migrated to the UK, 1937) - Philosopher
Elias Canetti (Born 1905, Austria; migrated to the UK, 1939) - Writer
Hans Keller (Born 1919, Austria; migrated to the UK, 1938) - Musicologist
Claus Moser (Born 1922, Germany; migrated to the UK, 1936) - Statistician
Immigration numbers to Britain:
2024 Estimate: Total UK Population: 69.3million
1951 1961 1971 1981
Foreign-born population: 13.9m – 20% of the total UK population. Ben Uri’s primary focus on their contribution to our society
population
