The Hannover Colliery is an impressive proof for the development of the Ruhrgebiet. It represents deep changes within the life and work conditions of the people in the area. One keyfactor of those changes in the area is the story of migration. With exhibitions, activities and cooperations the museum focusses on that topic.

The Hannover Colliery promoted manpower from abroud since the beginnings in the early 1850s. Besides their mostly poor luggage, the immigrants especially brought one thing to their new home in the Ruhrgebiet: Their culture.
All those cultures influence and enhance the life in the areas around Rhine and Ruhr down to the present day. Those mutual influences and relationships of the different cultures can be found in all different fields of society. Twelve pictured and texted boards on the grounds of the Hannover Colliery show those paths of migration while following the trails of immigration to the Ruhrgebiet.

The EU-funded oral-history project Specially Unknown gives refugees in four different cities across europe the opportunity to tell their stories while participating with their different cultures to help to develop the future of their new home. Specially trained interviewers gather those stories of refugees in Bochum, Paris, Turin and Antwerp.  

The internet portal www.migration-ausstellen.de collects the most important exhibitions on the topic of migration, tells contacts and serves as archive for smaller presentations. The internet portal is an important contribute of the LWL to help networking and ease the work for museums, especially on topic of migrants history not only in Westphalia but across the country.