The charity Queer Britain is reaching out to London boroughs, developers and the real estate industry in a bid to find a new, larger home for its LGBTQ+ museum.
Queer Britain is hosting an event on the evening of 10 April at its current museum space, at 2 Granary Square, N1, in which it will outline its plans to secure expanded premises via a section 106 agreement with a local authority and developer.
Queer Britain was founded in 2018 with a mission statement to preserve and reclaim LGBTQ+ stories and inspire people for the future by celebrating LGBTQ+ lives. It began with a series of pop-up exhibitions around the South East, then, in 2022, opened the UK’s first bricks and mortar LGBTQ+ museum, which welcomes around 30,000 visitors a year.
It now hopes to grow from its current 4,000 sq ft site to a new museum up to five times the size.
Queer Britain director Andrew Given said: “Currently, we’re in an amazing space in King’s Cross which has got a lot of passers-by, but we are seen as a destination venue, so people are finding out about us and planning specifically to travel to us.
“If everything goes according to plan, we hope to move to new premises with anywhere between 8,000 and 20,000 sq ft, and we believe the best way forward is for us to have a relationship with a local authority and a property developer and be part of a section 106 agreement.
“We have started speaking to the heads of culture and the property departments at Lambeth, Southwark, Westminster, Islington and Camden, and now we are looking to meet property developers that are building in those areas.
“At this event, we are looking at being able to demonstrate to a property developer what we can bring to a site, as a destination venue and a community hub.”
For more details on the event, which is supported by Freehold, the real estate profession’s LGBTQ+ networking hub, contact rsvp@queerbritain.org.uk by 4 April.
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