Our 2025 exhibition explores the overlooked richness and diversity of working-class life and creative expression from the 1950s to now.

Challenging long-standing inequities and misrepresentation, this exhibition will present compelling assertions of pride, tenderness, resilience, humour and hopefulness, and moments of play, joy and rest. Looking beyond the often reductive narratives of crisis and struggle that traditionally characterise representation of working-class people and communities in British arts institutions, Lives Less Ordinary champions a gaze from within, from artists from working-class backgrounds who have used their creativity to reflect wide-ranging experiences and identities, depicting and defining their culture and communities on their own terms.

Lives Less Ordinary will bring together ceramics, film, painting, photography and sculpture from wide-ranging public collections, archives, and contemporary artists across the UK, to explore a nuanced and authentic reflection of working-class experience, within an architectural setting that both manifests and interrogates wealth and privilege.

The exhibition will be accompanied by a wide-ranging programme of cultural events for adults and children including talks, lectures, demonstrations, workshops and Wednesday Late openings until 9pm, as well as the acclaimed Two Temple Place programme for state sector primary schools.