Text description of video: ‘Step inside the Empathy Museum’
This video is comprised of lots of short clips of people talking to camera, and some voiceover of people talking while there are clips playing of other people interacting with an art project in a public square. Between people talking, there is a musical track which is gentle lively percussion beats.
This text will give the name and a short description of each person that talks to the camera on when they first appear on screen, and then will refer to them as their name when they return on-screen later.
Person 1: a person, filmed from the waist up, looking at the camera, wearing a stripy shirt, a chunky beaded necklace, dangly earrings, black-framed glasses, and red lipstick. They are sitting in a long room with lots of shelves, but it’s mostly blurry behind them. Their voice is gentle, they have a soft northern English accent.
Person 1: “So when people come in, they go “Well, what’s this then?” [Raises their hands to the side of their body in an expression that feels like curiosity or questioning.]
Voiceover 1: a soft, calm voice with a south-east England accent.
Voiceover 1: “If you hear people describing what empathy is, quite often people either use the metaphor “to walk a mile in someone’s shoes” or “to see the world through someone else’s eyes”. What if we take that metaphor and make it literal?
While Voiceover 1 is speaking, clips play of details of the scene of the art project in the square: a person wearing blue skinny jeans and a pink t-shirt, and black patent stilettos with white trainer socks. They are carefully teetering about, with arms out to the side for balance. They have a look of great concentration on their face. In the background a few people go about their lives. A close-up view of a shoebox containing a pair of used trainers and a pair of headphones. A big brown wall that reads ‘Empathy Museum presents: A Mile in My Shoes’. A person in sunglasses nodding and smiling. A table covered in books and notebooks. Shelves of shoeboxes. A view of someone’s feet walking in slip-on shoes, filmed from their perspective.
The words ‘Empathy Museum’ In big red curly font appear on screen. Behind is a clip of the same person teetering in stilettos. Then a clip shows a giant, shipping-container-sized brown shoebox sitting in a public square. It has open doors on one side, and a small queue of people outside. Next to that is another shipping container, dressed to look like a row of book spines, each a different size and colour. In the background are fancy glass office-style buildings, some trees, and a few cranes.
Cut to a person with brown curly hair and a patterned blue jacket, filmed from the torso upwards. It looks as though they are sitting in the same room as person 1. Text on screen says ‘Clare Patey, Director, Empathy Museum’. When they talk, you can hear that this was the ‘Voiceover 1’ person. In this document, they will now be referred to as Clare.
While Clare talks, the camera cuts to short clips of the two shipping containers in the public square, with people milling about around them, sitting outside, taking photos, and close-ups of details inside the containers – chairs, headphones, shoes, a visitors board.
Clare: “The Empathy Museum was born out of a collaboration with myself and a writer/philosopher called Roman Krznaric. He approached me because he wanted to create an experiential museum. We opened a shoe shop where you can come in and you can be fitted with a pair of shoes that actually belong to someone else. You encounter the voice of that person telling you a story about their life.
Camera cuts to a person with short brown hair, filmed from the shoulders up, wearing a plaid shirt, with a dark background behind. Text on screen says ‘Josh Solnick, A Mile in My Shoes: Empathy Museum’.
Josh: “They’re almost a bit suspicious at first and they stand outside and they’re like “What’s going on?”
Camera cuts to short clips of various people inside the exhibits, trying on shoes, sitting down, wearing headphones, chatting. There is the faint sound of happy chatter.
Josh: “Suddenly they come into this box and they feel quite connected to it and the people in it.”
A person with short orange hair, a white dress and white tights is sitting down in the exhibit, lacing up a pair of huge black chunky boots. A voice off-screen asks “Do you ever wear shoes like this?”, and they reply, “No, never” and smile.
Camera cuts to short clips of various people inside the exhibits, trying on shoes, sitting down, wearing headphones, chatting.
Clare: “You can take a walk in that person’s shoes and the intimacy of having someone talking to you while you’re wearing their shoes and that you’re alone and that you’re on a physical journey… And it’s strangely powerful.”
Cut to a clip of the same person teetering in stilettos. Text on screen reads ‘Audio extract from ‘A Mile in My Shoes – Tim Redfern. Audio producer: Rob Eagle’. An audio clip plays of a person with a soft south-east England accent saying:
“I was really inspired by my mother putting on her makeup when I was a kid I used to watch my mum putting her makeup on and she used to do it really quite quickly so I’ve always kind of adopted this notion of like, you know, putting on drag shouldn’t take any more than 20 minutes.”
Camera cuts to short clips of various people inside the exhibits, trying on shoes, sitting down, wearing headphones, chatting.
Camera cuts to a person with long dark hair and a fringe, sitting down in the exhibit space, writing in the guestbook, chatting to people. They say:
“I work with human rights and public security in my country and I think empathy is the most difficult thing to provide. It’s something that you have or you don’t have. And this experience, to be in other people’s shoes is I think the most – I think the only way for you to feel how other people are, how other people feel. I think human rights is about to connect to other people, to recognise me in other people you know, the same humanity that we have.”
Clare: “There’s this new project called 1001 Books.”
Camera cuts to clip of shipping container that looks like a row of books. There are two colourful deck chairs outside it, its doors are open, and the sun is shining on the book spines. Then shots of details inside: shelves of books, notes hanging on the wall, a desk sign that says ‘librarian’.
Esther: “These are everybody’s favourite books on the shelves here. And they’ve donated them through a crowd-sourcing fund.
Clare: “And we’ve covered them, so that you can’t judge the book by its cover.”
Esther: “And they’ve written their own feelings or statements, comments about the book so that you engage in these statements and if you feel like you’re having a little moment with one of them or one of them jumps out at you or you can relate to one of them then you choose that book, that statement.”
Camera cuts to people inside the the container, looking at things on the wall, laughing, reading. A closeup of a person looking down and reading aloud:
“’I read this book in 36 hours straight whilst at university skipping a whole day of classes because I couldn’t put it down. Rarely have I been taken over so completely by a book. I loved the feeling and I wish the same will happen to everyone who reads it.’” It’s a really good pitch, isn’t it? And it kind of… I opened it and I recognised the title and it’s one of those sort of, heavy-handed classics that I would not normally pick up but that was er, Kris with a K, whoever he is or she has got me.”
Clare: “Each book has a number, and we have a website where you can then go on and see who’s been reading the book that you donated.”
Esther: “You say what you did with it so you can give it to a friend or a stranger or – as it says on the wall there – you can leave it on a park bench for someone else to find. And people get a bit worried sometimes and say “well what if it’s raining?” and I say, could wrap it in clingfilm!” [laughs]
Clare: “We are social people we are empathetic people and we just need a chance to encounter that in our everyday lives. I think it’s needed, especially at the moment in terms of what’s happening in the world.
Camera cuts to a person filmed from the shoulders up, wearing a white shirt, saying:
“It made me, anyway, I don’t know if it works for other people but it made me really like other people.”
Camera cuts to short clips of various people inside the exhibits, trying on shoes, sitting down, wearing headphones, chatting.
Esther: “If people can just think about others and know what it’s like to walk in someone else’s shoes. then the world would be such a simple and much better place. Yes, that’s what empathy is, isn’t it?” [smiles]
Credits roll on screen – text says:
Empathy Museum is an international travelling project. We have exhibited at:
Totally Thames
Perth International Arts Festival
NHS Confederation Annual Conference
LIFT 16
And run Human Libraries at:
Whitechapel Gallery
Brunei Gallery
SOAS
Perth Literary Festival
Find out where to find the Empathy Museum next at empathymuseum.com.
Film: Paul Wyatt
Then various logos come on screen.