We have really been missing all our visitors and are thoughts have been with you all during what has been, and continues to be, a very difficult year. Our doors have been closed since the first lockdown in March, but now that our tiny team is back at work we wanted share an update on our situation and some news to look forward to in 2021!
Although the Pankhurst Centre is closed to visitors at the moment, we are busy working on a project that will transform your future visit. This means that, following Covid lockdowns and the work that we need to carry out, it will be summer 2021 when we reopen.
A new permanent exhibition At Home with the Pankhurst Family will explore the lives of the radical family that once lived at 62 Nelson Street, and transform the experience of visiting the Pankhurst Centre. Funded by AIM Biffa Award, as part of the Landfill Communities Fund, we hope that the stories shared will be inspiring and empowering to a new generation of activists and change makers.
We are also delighted to have been awarded funding from The National Lottery Heritage Fund to support the development of the Pankhurst Centre archive. Rooms of Our Own: A Herstory of the Pankhurst Centre will seek to make our important archive of feminist material accessible and focuses on the period from 1974, when the campaign to save Emmeline Pankhurst’s former home from destruction began, to 2014.
As a small team we are incredibly grateful that during this vulnerable time for cultural organisations that The National Lottery Heritage Fund’s Heritage Emergency Fund has contributed towards our immediate costs over the next four months. This will help us to keep on with development work necessary to make these new projects happen and for our small team to continue to work remotely.
We hope that this is the beginning of the future that we know the Pankhurst Centre deserves, one in which the birthplace of the suffragette movement is properly conserved and restored, and is able to welcome visitors from across the world. Thanks to our funding partners we are taking an important step forward in achieving this long-term future vision and thanks to emergency funding our survival over the next few months has also been assured.
It’s great to have positive news to share, but our fundraising quest continues. You can help by becoming a Friend of the Pankhurst Centre or making a donation to the Pankhurst Centre.
We will be sharing updates on all our activities on our social media channels and through our email newsletter, which you can subscribe to by scrolling to the bottom of our webpage.