The working life of Museum of London

By project manager Meriel Jeater (curator, Department of Early London History and Collections)

Outside Edge: a journey through black British lesbian and gay history explores the history of the black LGBT (lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender) community in Britain, with a focus on London. It publicly commemorates people and events important to the black LGBT community, celebrates its achievements and highlights the issues it has faced in the past and still faces today. The exhibition documents the emergence of the black LGBT community from the 1970s and demonstrates its contribution to campaigns for fair representation and against homophobia, as well as celebrating the black LGBT cultural, club and music scene.

So why is a curator in the Department of Early London History project managing a display about life in modern London?
At the Museum of London our jobs can become quite flexible and members of staff often get the opportunity to become involved in projects that, on the surface, have little to do with their everyday jobs. It’s all part of staff development and gives us a chance to learn new skills, work with different people across the organisation and externally, and gain experience.

The Museum was contacted back in March 2007 by an organisation called the rukus! Federation, who wanted to put on an exhibition at the Museum in Docklands about the history of the black LGBT community, a story that is not well known and rarely covered by museums and similar institutions. Together with the Museum of London’s Head of Public Programmes (Darryl McIntyre), Ajamu, the co-founder of rukus!, wrote a proposal and a business case for the exhibition, which was approved by the Museum’s exhibitions committee. Once the concept of the exhibition had been given the green light, they needed someone at the Museum to organise the exhibition and a project team to produce it.

I was chosen as project manager and worked closely with Ajamu and the museum project team over seven months to put the exhibition together.

What goes into an exhibition like this?
A project team of many people across different departments in the Museum work together on exhibitions.

In my next post I’ll talk about some of the different ways people across the museum were involved in the project.

Below are some images of objects from the exhibition. Click to view larger versions hosted on Flickr.