Remembering Sir Harold Kroto

It is with great sadness that we share with you news of the passing of Sir Harold Kroto, a Distinguished Friend of the Migration Museum Project, on 30 April 2016.

Sir Harold Kroto was a Nobel Prize winner, and one of our first and most enthusiastic Distinguished Friends. He spoke engagingly at our very first event at LSE in 2011 about the contribution that migrants have made to science in the UK, chaired by Mr Justice Rabinder Singh, alongside Mike Phillips and Philippe Sands QC. His presence no doubt contributed to the event being heavily oversubscribed, and we had to turn people away at the doors. As our first MMP outing, it was very exciting and gave us a foretaste of the interest that this project was to generate. We are enormously grateful for Sir Harold’s Kroto’s support over the years.

Sir Harold Kroto – obituary, The Telegraph

MMP Education Committee chair Bushra Nasir appointed as deputy lieutenant for London

Congratulations to our Education Committee chair, Bushra Nasir, on her appointment as deputy lieutenant for Greater London. More information can be found on the Greater London Lieutenancy website.

Bushra Nasir CBE was a secondary headteacher with 20 years’ experience at Plashet School in the London Borough of Newham before retiring in December 2012. She was the first Muslim female headteacher of a secondary school in the UK. In 2003, she was awarded a CBE for her services to education and in 2005 won the ‘Asian Professional Woman of the Year’ award. She served on the General Teaching Council from 2000 to 2005 and was president of the Muslim Teachers’ Association for six years. In 2006, Bushra was awarded an Honorary Doctorate from the University of East London for her services to education; in 2007 she received a Fellowship from Queen Mary College London.

Successful crowdfunding campaign for June exhibition

We successfully completed a crowdfunding campaign for our June exhibition, Call me by my name: Stories from Calais and beyond. With the support of 116 backers, we raised £5880, surpassing our target of £5000. You can read more about our crowdfunding campaign, which featured in the Museums Association Journal.

The exhibition will launch on 2 June 2016 at the Londonewcastle Project Space at 28 Redchurch Street, and run until 22 June 2016. More information on the exhibition and opening hours can be found here.

Adopting Britain ends at Southbank Centre

We are very proud to have been a part of the Adopting Britain exhibition, curated by Southbank Centre in partnership with Counterpoints Arts, during its run at Royal Festival Hall from April to September 2015.

We received an enormous amount of enthusiasm and support from visitors to the exhibit, which featured our 100 Images of Migration and Keepsakes.

Images from the exhibition

London Live covered the exhibition and featured Keepsakes contributor Maurice Nwokeji. You can watch the video here.

You can also read a guest blog post by Mihir Bose, a distinguished friend of the Migration Museum Project, written after his visit to Adopting Britain.

Did you visit Adopting Britain or have any thoughts about the exhibition? Please tweet us @MigrationUK or write to us on Facebook. We would love to hear from you!