Issue - meetings

The Cabinet Member for Community Leadership and Engagement introduced a report on plans to bring to fruition the Council’s long-held ambition for a museum celebrating women and girls from London’s East End to be located in the Borough.

The Cabinet Member advised that the East End Women’s Museum would operate out of new ground floor retail premises in Abbey Road, Barking, which had been made available to the Council as part of the Section 106 planning agreement for the Be:Here development at Barking Abbey Retail Park.  The project, which would be delivered in partnership with Eastside Community Heritage and the Museum founders via a Community Interest Company, would have the key aims of:

·  Providing local residents with an opportunity to learn about the area’s history and to contribute their voices and experiences, building a sense of ownership and pride in the Borough’s heritage;

·  Providing local women and girls with stronger links to their own history of economic contribution, cultural influence and civic participation, building a sense of empowerment;

·  Presenting girls and young women in the Borough with positive role models from the region's history and examples of women’s strength and resourcefulness; and

·  Providing girls and young women with opportunities to learn about heritage themes which are traditionally presented as ‘masculine’, including politics, union activism, science, engineering and manufacturing.

The Cabinet resolved to:

(i)  Authorise the Chief Executive, in consultation with the Director of Law and Governance, to grant a 30-year lease for ground floor retail premises at the Be:Here housing development on Abbey Road, Barking, for the East End Women’s Museum, subject to satisfactory negotiation of the lease and associated requirements; and 

(ii)  Authorise the Chief Executive, in the event that it is not possible to enter into a lease agreement with the East End Women’s Museum, to enter into a lease on the same terms with another cultural organisation.