Help the Feminist Library build its new home

Wow - you are all incredible! Thank to all your support, we’ve had another amazing week on Crowdfunder! We’ve nearly reached 85% of our target now! This means that we are now just a little over £4,500 away from reaching our first crowdfunding target! :) And if we can give it another big push in the remaining 2 weeks, we stand a good chance of not just getting there, but well surpassing the target - which would bring us one step closer to covering the full costs of building the gorgeous new Feminist Library space with the crowdfunding money! 

We would like to take this opportunity to give massive thanks to all our amazing supporters like you, who have helped us spread the word far and wide - we have now had messages of support from Canada, US, Ireland, Wales and beyond! - and anyone who covered our story. And just this week, we’ll be promoting our campaign at the History Day 2018 conference, LGBTQ+ History & Archiving event at Met Archives, Feminist Archive South event in Plymouth and Peckham Salvage Yard Xmas market! 

Thanks to the campaign, we have also got quite a few more new volunteers, including photographers. So we will have loads more photos (and gifs!) of our home of 32+ years before we’ve moved! :) If you'd like to volunteer to help us make the move happen, contact our volunteer coordinator, Katie, [email protected]. 

And in case you haven’t heard - we’re part of an amazing animation project in collaboration with LCC (London College of Communications) - just down the road from the Library - making animations on the women behind the Library! The work is still in progress, but you can find a few sneak previews by following the project’s social media here.  

Last week we’ve also had another piece on our campaign published by the Morning Star, in a blog post by FLA (Feminist Libraries & Archives) Network, we heard that our interview for Dissident Island Radio is now available to download and that Community Southwark is going to give our story another shoutout on their blog! And we’re waiting for more stories still, including our interviews for Artefact and Dazed magazines, and a short film about our survival story! We would love to hear from you if you would like to cover our story in the last 2 weeks of the campaign! 

And we’ve also added even more new rewards to our already large volume of choices! You can now pick between a special edition move tote bag and a Shero card and an ‘I’m a feminist because…’ card and tote combo!  

To add to all the excitement, our new space design team has the other had a workshop - all about the Feminist Library project! - and have sent us an update, along with some new drawings, designs and pictures of our new home. You can see some here and some more on our and their social media in the coming weeks and months. 

The team told us about the workshop and involvement in the Feminist Library new home project:

“Hi-Vis, Studio Lucy Sanderson and Power Project met this week for a design workshop on the new Feminist Library. We explored the colour and materials of the library shelving, possible lighting for the space, signage design and started planning the build itself! As a design team we are keen to bring the historical context and values of the Feminist Library into the walls of the new space.”

Read more about the design team and the project in recently published articles in Stylist magazine and our special edition move newsletter.

The Feminist Library collective is incredibly grateful to our design team - Power Project, Hi-Vis and Lucy Sanderson - and all the other amazing organisations and individuals who have supported us to help make our crowdfunding efforts such a success. Keep an eye out for more details on the others coming soon here! 

And don’t forget, our Winter Fayre (the last chance to party in our current home!) is on the 8th Dec and the tickets are now available to book. Come and join us for this last chance to celebrate with us in our home of 32 years before we move! 

Please help us to spread the word about our move campaign even further - we still have some 15% to go to cover our initial target - i.e. the basic costs of the move. But then we have another £30,000 or so to cover the full costs of the move after that! So any help we can get to meet some, or all, of all of the stretch funding target will be massively appreciated!  

Seeing all the support we have received during the campaign already, the Feminist Library team feels amazing and we are super confident that, together, with all the amazing supporters that we’ve got, we can do it - we can cover all these costs by the end of this exciting campaign!