Help the Feminist Library build its new home

We only have 10 days of our crowdfunding campaign left and nearly £7,000 still to raise - help us get all the way to the full target, covering all the costs of our new home, by sharing this update with your friends and colleagues today! TOGETHER we can do this - we can get to 100% of our target and build an amazing new home of herstory in Peckham!  

This week, we have also caught up with the latest addition to our fab feminist design team - Anna Lincoln - who told us about her inspiration for feminist graphic design and the Feminist Library new home campaign in particular. 

Q: What inspired you to join a feminist design/architecture/makers team? 

A: I work as a designer for cultural institutions and museums, where design options are sometimes subject to restrictions. Institutions like these often need 'safe' design outcomes that are robust for large volumes of people traffic, and which meet conservation requirements for vulnerable objects, limiting the materials used. 

Arguably, museums are also becoming more commercially driven. The need to attract wide audiences can result in less risk-taking in design. Good design is key to our collective liberation, so trends like this could have negative impacts on museums and society as a whole.  

Being invited to join a young and talented team, with a collective outlook that challenges more traditional structures of working, really excited me. It offered an opportunity to break out of rigid design structures and processes, and immerse myself in experimentation and play. Working with lo fi font-making methods, like tape, means I can also devise workshops to encourage others to take part. 

Q: Tell us more about your feminist practice. 

A: My practice is based around collaboration - whether this involves exhibition designers, curators or the intended audience. Much of my work involves research, and often findings surface that take me on a divergent but interesting path. I may have to force myself back to the project in hand, but the avenues of thought and discovery that I explore are essential to the way I work, and research findings often re-emerge in different ways in later work. Narrative design is often layered and my design decisions will have defined rationales, specific to different contexts. Researching for the feminist library project has been great - the library is a treasure trove of graphic design, much of it outside mainstream design culture.

Q: What do you like about the Feminist Library and why did you decide to join the new home project? 

A: The Library has a long history of self-determined identity: it carries the creative energy of all the women who have contributed to its endeavour. It is incredibly important that this work does not get lost. My mum wrote a couple of articles for Spare Rib which I hadn't seen before my involvement here. Publicly available archives became a way for me to see something really cool that was personal to me. 

The relocation is an opportunity to create a framework for future, grass roots work that will give the Library both order and space for expression. I wanted to be involved in creating graphic systems with the design team that will allow for an exciting future in a new home and see how it evolves as the space takes shape. 

Q: What inspires your everyday practice outside of this work? 

A: I spend a lot of time making the most of my museum pass, which allows me into lots of London galleries and museums. I can be a bit of a whirlwind around exhibition spaces, skipping content to look at new display techniques or interesting materials. Geekily, I get very excited when I see a small intervention which a designer has crept in which doesn't fit inside a normal gallery framework. Archives are a great place too - Bishopsgate Library, Bancroft Road and Friends of Island History Trust on the Isle of Dogs all have great archives. 

Anna is currently working with our other creative volunteers to ensure that the designs reflect the herstory and the spirit of collective working so important to us at the Library. We can't wait to see what the collaboration brings! Get in touch if you'd like to volunteer - there's still plenty to do here before we finalise the move! 

As our crowdfunding efforts slowly draw to a close, we want to make sure that we appreciate all the people who have been involved in this exciting project of moving the Library to Peckham. In the next few weeks, we will be profiling the rest of our design team. In the meantime, we wanted to say a massive thank you to all our supporters and dozens of volunteers who have been with us on this amazing journey. 

It is not too late to support! We still have 10 days of our crowdfunding campaign to go and almost £7,000 still to raise - help us get all the way there by sharing this update or any of our social media posts about the campaign. TOGETHER we can get to 100% of our target!  

Lots of love, 

Feminist Library collective