Museum of Failure to open in UK featuring Titanic, Brexit and Britain’s design disasters

Britain’s long and often dramatic history of mismanaged innovation, doomed projects and ill-conceived ideas is finally finding its cultural center.

Next spring, an internationally touring Museum of Failure will open in the UK, celebrating everything from great design disasters to corporate achievements – all viewed with an eye for learning rather than derision.

Its founder, Dr Samuel West, believes that the UK is the natural home for this exhibition. Having toured the museum across Europe, the US and Asia, he says Britain’s dark humor and love of the underdog made it uniquely receptive to the idea of ​​openly exploring failure.

“I’ve always wanted to bring it back home,” West said. “The British comedy scene totally gets this – that sarcasm, black people’s awareness that things can go terribly wrong.”

The Museum of Failure is dedicated entirely to innovations that failed. Its collection includes failed gadgets, abandoned technology, commercial disasters and cultural misjudgment, highlighting the messy reality of progress. Visitors are encouraged to laugh, but also to think about the risks that underlie any attempt to do something new.

UK born shows will feature prominently. Among them are the Titanic, the Sinclair C5, the abandoned NHS national IT system, Dyson’s Zone headphones, Amstrad mail, The Body Shop – and Brexit. Together, they draw a uniquely British talent for ambition, confidence, and, at times, disastrous execution.

Innovation strategist Ben Strutt, who runs workshops on turning failure into strategic advantage, said the show had the power to change attitudes by showing how common failure is.

“Guests will see that even the biggest brands in the world fail,” he said. “They will also see how some failures later lead to success – like the Apple Newton that paves the way for the iPhone, or Google Glass that shapes today’s unpopular wearables – and how sometimes the best products lose to the worst, like Betamax versus VHS.”

West is keen to emphasize that the museum is not a mockery. Instead, he aims to normalize failure as a necessary ingredient for innovation – something he believes is still widely stigmatized, despite Silicon Valley’s rhetoric of “failure to move forward”.

“I want to rebrand failure as normal,” he said. “If we only glorify success and punish failure, we stop taking the risks necessary to solve the biggest problems of our time – environmental, social and economic.”

Psychologist Fiona Murden, who has written extensively about resilience and failure, believes that a museum can be especially powerful for younger visitors, helping them rethink risk and creativity. However, he also cautions against simplifying the message.

“There is a danger in celebrating failure too much,” he said. “If it’s written as always light or cool, it can make the real stress, loss and consequences people have when things go wrong.”

West acknowledges that failure is not evenly distributed. He remembers being challenged after a speech by a woman from the Ivory Coast who pointed out that, unlike businessmen in rich countries, his failure could put the whole family into poverty.

“He was right,” she said. “Failure is cultural, economic and political. If you’re an immigrant worker or running a business without a safety net, failure isn’t something to learn from – it’s something to be had.”

That cultural diversity has shaped how the museum is received around the world. In China, tourists reportedly enjoyed laughing at failed western products. In risk-averse South Korea, some were confused by what they saw as a celebration of failure. In the US, the show was seen as a joke, neatly wrapped up in the story that failure always leads to success.

Britain, the West suspects, will be different.

“There is a natural understanding here,” he said. “Recognizing that some failures don’t get you anywhere, that things can be painful, pointless and meaningless – and still have to be explored.”

The final UK location is yet to be confirmed, but when it does open, the Museum of Failure looks set to be a hit in a country that has long mastered the art of making things go wrong with incredible confidence.