In collaboration with the Mayor of London's Commission for Diversity in the Public Realm, the East End Women’s Museum is hosting a free, online discussion about how women are and should be represented within London's statues, memorials and street art.

The event will begin with an introduction to the work of the Commission from the team at the Greater London Authority. We will then hear provocations from Museum co-founder Sara Huws, and Ayahs Home founder Farhanah Mamoojee, on their vital work to improve women’s representation, as well as the challenges and opportunities it presents.

We will then have facilitated discussion to hear your views, looking at questions such as:

* which London women’s stories would you like to see (better) represented in the public realm?

* what does excellent representation of women in the public realm look like? Is it important that women are represented as much as men in ‘traditional’ means (e.g. statues, plaques) or should we look for other ways altogether (e.g. contemporary art, guerrilla interventions)?

* which people / organisations / initiatives are doing this work, and can we link up and support?

* what do we ultimately want to achieve with this shift in representation?

The purpose of the Commission for Diversity in the Public Realm is to lead a London-wide conversation on how to practically achieve greater diversity of representation across the public realm and heritage sites. This will have a focus on increasing presence and visibility of underrepresented groups including Black, Asian and minority ethnic, women, LGTBQ+ and disabled groups and will include consideration of representation of socio-economic diversity. 

Discussions from this event will feed directly into the first meeting of the Commission in late January 2021. This will be the first of many community events and there will be further opportunities to engage with the work of the Commission throughout the two-year length of the project.

 
The event will take place online via Zoom. Book your place here.

Please note the event date is Thursday 21st January. This has changed the date was previously advertised in the e-newsletter. Apologies for any inconvenience.

What does it mean to start a museum in the last decade? How does practice echo or differ from older museums?

The Museum of British Colonialism began in 2018, a good 335 years after the Ashmolean. The East End Women's Museum, est. 2015, holds one object (its founding email) -- 7,999,999 fewer than the British Museum.

 MoBC and EEWM are both part of a new group of ‘emerging’ museums - organisations with an explicitly social justice mission. Committed to making visible otherwise underrepresented histories, we use participatory, grassroots approaches to capture and tell people’s stories. Moreover, we aim to make positive change in the present, challenging established narratives, and putting marginalised voices back in the frame.

 This panel discussion will explore the opportunities and challenges of this new museological space, including how new museums approach their work; being a museum without holding objects; use of participatory, artistic and co-design practices; and the representation of diverse stories. We’ll also discuss whether a new museum -- however contemporary in inception and inclusive in intention -- can ever truly avoid the colonial, patriarchal baggage of its elder peers.

Recording available to Museum Association members here.