The archive · Public & Social · Product decision · 2015–2024
A Mile in My Shoes: a shoe shop where you walk in a stranger's story
Visitors swap into a stranger's actual shoes and hear their recorded story as they walk — an empathy exhibit that has reached 14 countries.
Empathy Museum
What it had to solve
Clare Patey's Empathy Museum wanted a public format that turned empathy from a word into an act. In 2015 the first installation opened on London's South Bank: visitors were fitted with a stranger's shoes and walked beside the Thames with that person's story playing in their ears.
How it works
Empathy is usually something we ask people to imagine: 'put yourself in someone else's shoes.' Clare Patey's Empathy Museum took the instruction literally. In 2015 it opened an interactive shoe shop on London's South Bank, fitted visitors with a stranger's donated pair, and sent them walking along the Thames with that person's recorded story in their ears.
The format is deliberately plain. A giant shoebox houses the stock; visitors trade their own footwear for an unfamiliar pair — shoe sizes run from 2 to 13 — put on headphones and walk a short route while the owner tells their story. The narrators span a Syrian refugee, a war veteran, a sex worker, a neurosurgeon and an RNLI lifesaver, so the walk crosses lives most visitors would never otherwise meet.
The shoe shop collects new pairs wherever it lands, which lets each city add its own voices rather than repeat a fixed show. The Health Foundation commissioned a health and social care edition in 2016 and brought it to Parliament and NHS events, and the travelling box moved from British cities to New York. The collection now holds more than 350 stories in nine languages across 14 countries.
Why it lands
- Wearing a real person's shoes makes the encounter physical before a word is heard — their size, wear and smell carry the story.
- Walking while listening turns attention into motion, so the visitor experiences the narrator's route instead of passively consuming a tale.
- Collecting new shoes in every city keeps the project alive and local: the exhibit is different in Denver, Milan and Melbourne.
- The rules are so simple — swap shoes, walk, listen — that any organization can host the format with just a box and a few stories.
What it did
The Empathy Museum reports more than 350 stories in nine languages gathered across 14 countries, with themed sets built for Denver, Milan and Melbourne and for health and social care. A weekly podcast releases the stories to listeners who never reached the box.
What you can take
A metaphor you act out beats a message you hear: making the visitor physically walk turns another person's perspective into something the body has to live.
Since then
A Mile in My Shoes grew from a South Bank experiment into an international project: 350-plus stories in nine languages gathered across 14 countries, a UK health and social care edition that reached Parliament, a weekly podcast, and tours from British cathedral squares to New York. Its lasting move was showing that a charity doesn't need a campaign — it can simply give strangers a reason to feel what another life feels like.
Sources
- A Mile in My Shoes — project page
- Empathy Museum giant shoebox lets you walk a mile in a stranger's shoes
- About this project — A Mile in My Shoes: Health and Social Care
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