About
The Wee Museum of Memory is a free, hands-on museum of twentieth-century everyday life on the first floor of Ocean Terminal shopping centre in Leith, and it is unlike almost any other museum in Scotland in one crucial respect: there are no glass cases. Visitors are invited to pick things up, turn them over, smell them and talk about them. The collection is built entirely around the objects of ordinary domestic life — National Dried Milk tins, bottles of Old Spice, kitchen gadgets, woodworking tools, packaging, toys, household appliances — chosen not for rarity but for their power to unlock memory.
It is run by the Living Memory Association, an Edinburgh charity established in 1986 as a reminiscence project and granted charitable status in 2001. Reminiscence work has a substantial evidence base in dementia care: familiar objects, smells and textures can reach memories that conversation alone cannot, often producing recognition and animation in people who have become withdrawn. The Association was first offered a pop-up space at Ocean Terminal in 2015 and has since developed it into a permanent, seven-day-a-week dementia-friendly drop-in centre serving people with dementia and their carers, alongside its museum function.
What makes the place genuinely unusual is that these two purposes are not separated. There is no clinical wing and no visitor wing. A tourist who has walked over from the Royal Yacht Britannia, moored a few hundred yards away, finds themselves in the same room as a couple who come every week because it is the one outing where nobody minds if the same story is told three times. The conversations that result are the actual exhibit, and staff and volunteers are practised at making them happen between strangers.
Admission is free, the space is fully accessible, and it is open every day of the week. Alongside drop-in visiting, the Association runs regular structured reminiscence sessions and undertakes home visits, and it offers signposting and support to other services for families navigating a dementia diagnosis. For a museum occupying a former clothing shop in a shopping centre, it does a remarkable amount of work, and it does it without ever making a visitor feel they have wandered into somebody else's therapy session.
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Plan Your Visit
⏱️ Recommended Visit Duration
💡 Visitor Tips
- Pick things up. It genuinely is allowed, and visitors who treat the displays like a conventional museum miss the entire point of the place.
- Talk to the staff and volunteers. The conversation is the exhibit, and they are practised at drawing out memories and connecting strangers who turn out to have shared experiences.
- Bring an older relative. The museum is designed around exactly this visit, and it works particularly well for people who find conventional attractions tiring or overwhelming.
- If you are visiting with someone living with dementia, you need not explain or apologise for anything. Repetition, confusion and sudden emotion are entirely expected here.
- Care homes, day centres and community groups should book ahead so that a structured reminiscence session can be arranged rather than a simple drop-in.
- Combine the visit with the Royal Yacht Britannia, moored a couple of minutes' walk away in the same complex, for a striking contrast of preserved histories.
- The tram now reaches Ocean Terminal directly from the city centre and the airport, making this considerably easier to get to than it once was.
- Ocean Terminal has been substantially redeveloped in recent years, so check the current unit location on the centre's directory if you cannot find the museum immediately.
Highlights
A Museum With No Glass Cases
The single defining principle here is that everything can be handled. There are no vitrines, no barriers and no signs telling visitors not to touch, because touching is the entire point. Weight, texture, the resistance of a Bakelite switch, the particular rattle of a biscuit tin — these physical properties carry memory in ways that looking through glass simply cannot reach.
Museum professionals spend careers arguing for more handling collections; the Wee Museum of Memory is built from the ground up as one. For visitors accustomed to conventional museum discipline, the permission to pick things up takes a few minutes to accept and is then unexpectedly liberating.
The Smells of the Twentieth Century
Scent reaches memory more directly than any other sense, bypassing the analytical parts of the brain almost entirely, and the collection exploits this deliberately. Old Spice aftershave, carbolic soap, Vick, pipe tobacco, the particular dusty-metallic smell of an old toolbox, floor polish and mothballs: these prompt recognition in visitors who may struggle to name the object in their hand.
Staff use scent purposefully in reminiscence work, and even casual visitors frequently find that a bottle unstoppered on the counter produces a sudden, complete recollection of a grandparent's house.
A Dementia-Friendly Drop-In Centre
The museum operates simultaneously as a seven-day-a-week drop-in centre for people living with dementia and those who care for them.
Reminiscence has a real evidence base in dementia care: familiar objects and smells can reach memories that direct conversation cannot, often producing animation and recognition in people who have withdrawn. Just as importantly, the space offers carers somewhere to go where nobody stares, nobody hurries them, and repetition is entirely unremarkable.
Staff also provide signposting to other services, which for families newly navigating a diagnosis is frequently as valuable as the reminiscence itself.
The Living Memory Association Since 1986
The charity behind the museum began in 1986 as a reminiscence project, at a point when the idea that recording and prompting ordinary memory constituted serious work was far from established. It gained charitable status in 2001 and was offered a pop-up space at Ocean Terminal in 2015, which has since become permanent.
Four decades of practice have produced considerable expertise in reminiscence technique, an extensive object collection assembled largely through public donation, and a network of relationships with care homes and day centres across Edinburgh and the Lothians.
Collections
The Wee Museum of Memory holds a handling collection of twentieth-century everyday objects assembled largely through public donation by the Living Memory Association since 1986. Material covers domestic and kitchen equipment, household appliances and packaging, toiletries and branded goods, toys and games, tools and trade equipment, office and shop fittings, and clothing and textiles, with an emphasis on the familiar rather than the rare.
Nothing is displayed behind glass; the entire collection is intended to be picked up, examined and discussed.
Scent is used deliberately alongside touch as a memory prompt. The collection supports both drop-in visiting and structured reminiscence sessions for people living with dementia.
The Handling Collection
Open displays of twentieth-century domestic and working objects — kitchen equipment, toiletries, toys, tools and packaging — all available to be picked up, handled and discussed without barriers or cases.
The Reminiscence Space
A dementia-friendly drop-in area with seating where structured reminiscence sessions are run and where visitors, carers and volunteers share memories prompted by objects and scents.
Themes
Time Periods
Current Exhibitions
No current exhibitions. Please check the museum website for updates.