Vagina Museum launches urgent crowdfunding appeal

In a now-or-never appeal, the Vagina Museum has launched a crowdfunding campaign to raise the remaining £42,000 it needs to move into a new home.

If the target is not reached by early June, the Vagina Museum will close permanently.

The world's first bricks-and-mortar museum dedicated to vaginas, vulvas and gynaecological anatomy, the organisation began its crowdfunding campaign for a total of £85,000 five weeks ago.

During this time, the appeal has raised more than £43,000 – just over £32,000 from the public and £11,500 behind the scenes.

If the target amount is reached, the museum will use it towards a new premises situated between two railway arches in East London. The space would be divided into three galleries, with an events space, and has the possibility of expanding to provide a cafe.

In 2021, the museum’s lease ended in its Camden Market premises. The museum did not have a physical presence until it reopened at a site in Bethnal Green in March 2022.

Less than a year later, in February 2023, the Vagina Museum was suddenly and unexpectedly asked to vacate its premises at Victoria Park Square, which had been under a property guardianship. The situation led to the current urgent appeal to raise funds towards the new premises.

Florence Schechter, the director of the Vagina Museum said: "This is crunch time. The Vagina Museum needs your help to survive, thrive and grow. Our financial modelling for our new home indicates that we will be in a secure, self-sustaining position, but in order to get to that point we urgently need a substantial cash injection. We have every faith that we will meet our fundraising goal within this timeframe.

"Things have been touch-and-go for an emerging museum in a pandemic and a cost-of-living crisis and we have so far risen to every challenge we have faced. We have a strong community at our side with a huge interest in seeing this project succeed. We know that people would hate to see the Vagina Museum, which means so much to so many people, disappear from this world. So we have every reason to be optimistic that we will meet this target."

The Vagina Museum offers free admission, and has welcomed more than 175,000 visitors since it opened in 2019.

To raise extra funds, the museum is holding a sale in its online shop where customers can get 10% off with the code GETUSANEWHOME. Vagina Museum members can get 15% off. The sale ends on 31 May.

Schechter’s debut book, V: An empowering celebration of the vulva and vagina, has recently been published by Penguin.