Our commitment to anti-racism and equity

We are committed to continuing to develop our programming and policies on anti-racism and equity, both in terms of curation and the museum’s own staff, Board and creative partners.

These are our priorities:

• We will share more diverse and representative stories of home throughout the Museum. This is consistent with our new mission to be a place to reveal and rethink the ways we live in order to live better together.
• We will not only recognise the history of our buildings. We will also address the impact of colonialism and systematic racism in the context of what home means to people today, through our exhibitions, collections, objects and programming.
• We will transform the make-up of the Museum so that people from diverse backgrounds work at all levels throughout the organisation. The Board believes that this will enable people from Black, Asian and Minority Ethnic communities to have real power and agency in determining the future of the Museum. This starts with a commitment by the Chair of the Board to ensure that the Museum’s Board of Trustees will have significantly more diverse representation by July 2021, and that the Trustees reflect the diversity of London.
• We will invite and work with Black artists and the community in Hackney to use the statue and the history of the Museum’s buildings as a platform for discussion and creative response.
• We will reinterpret the statue honestly and transparently to tell the history of Geffrye’s career and his connections with the forced labour and trading of enslaved Africans.
• We will continue to work with and be inspired by our local communities to share ideas and co-curate our diverse creative programme for the future.

Black Lives Matter

We strongly believe that museums should not be neutral. As a sector we have a responsibility to be inclusive and accessible.

We are committed to anti-racism and equity, and to working harder to make our organisation more representative.

We will learn from history and ensure our staff, programme and collection tell diverse stories and represent Black voices, artists, visitors and communities.