Becoming You: An Incomplete Guide at the Immigration Museum

Why are the experiences of our early years scored so indelibly in our brains?

The Immigration Museum is exploring such formative moments in our lives with Becoming You: An Incomplete Guide – a deep dive into the transitional period of adolescence.

Sharing stories across time, culture, ethnicity, sexuality, gender, ability and place, the exhibition boasts a series of speakers drawn from science, activism, sport, art, design and the everyday, with each sharing real-life stories drawn from Victorian classrooms, kitchens, pubs, clubs, homes and streets.

They include performance artist and writer Adolfo Aranjuez, astrophysicist Alan Duffy, author Alice Pung, model Andreja Pejić, artist Atong Atem, poet and critic Fiona Wright, climate activist Harriet O’Shea Carre, disability activist Jax Jacki Brown, AFL footballer Jason Johannisen, fashion designer Jenny Bannister, drag queen Karen from Finance, Gunnai-Gunditjmara Greens Senator for Victoria Lidia Thorpe, rapper Nathan “Birdz” Bird, ballet dancer and actor Noel Tovey, comedian and writer Osamah Sami, documentary filmmaker Santilla Chingaipe, Lord Mayor of Melbourne Sally Capp and cross-cultural consultant Tasneem Chopra. There's also lesser known stories to be heard – a young migrant girl on learning important lessons from her grandma and one man’s lessons learnt after burning down a pub.

Visitors grow up again as they enter the exhibition via a corridor of questions; explore rules and boundaries in the library; engage with dreams and aspirations, met and unmet, in the bedroom. Other pods explore sexuality and physicality; celebrate achievements, firsts and arrivals (and may or may not smell of Passion Pop) and look at nascent activism and good old-fashioned rebellion.

Afterwards step back out onto the street, a little wiser from looking back.

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