Summary of the presentation by Alison Blunt (PI), Alastair Owens (CI) and Julie Begum (community researcher) at a meeting with the Board of Trustees of the Museum of the Home on 16 September 2021

Alison Blunt (PI), Alastair Owens (CI) and Julie Begum (community researcher) attended a meeting with the Board of Trustees of the Museum of the Home on 16 September 2021, together with representatives from other groups, to address the impact of the statue of Sir Robert Geffrye on the museum's work with partners and with people from diverse and under-represented backgrounds. 

In our presentation and contributions to the roundtable discussion, we demonstrated: 

(1) the significant and negative impact of the statue on the Stay Home Stories project and members of the project team, including the project's community researchers; 

(2)  that what the statue represents - and its prominent, elevated position on the museum buildings - conflicts with (i) the fundamental aims of our collaborative work on Stay Home Stories, which include documenting the disproportionate impact of COVID-19 on the domestic lives of people from minority ethnic backgrounds and (ii) with the core aim of the Centre for Studies of Home to deepen and diversify understandings of home.  

We made four requests to the Board of Trustees: 

(1) to publicly recognize the offence the statue is causing and acknowledge the harm that it is doing for the Museum's work with partners and with people from diverse and under-represented backgrounds; 

(2) to publicly support moving the statue from its prominent, elevated position to elsewhere in the Museum and to actively work on ways to achieve this; 

(3) to commit to measures that can be taken to minimize the negative impact of the statue and to reiterate their full support for the work that is being done by the museum and its partners to create a more inclusive institution that represents the experiences and serves the needs of diverse communities; 

(4) to communicate openly and facilitate dialogue about the statue, including through public events and a more prominent statement on the Museum website.