More than 100 MPs have signed a letter urging the government to commit funding to the Black Cultural Archives in Brixton, which is facing potential closure due to lack of funding.
The centre, which is the only national heritage centre dedicated to preserving the histories of African and Caribbean people in Britain, has received Heritage Lottery Funding since it opened a new building in 2014.
For the last four years, this has provided two thirds of the Archives funding, but this period has now come to an end.
Chuka Umunna, MP for Streatham, spoke in Parliament yesterday in Prime Minister’s Questions, highlighting the cause.
“The BCA currently receives none and is at threat of closure,” Umunna said.
“Can I ask the prime minister to explain the differential treatment of the BCA and, in this Windrush year of all years, to right this wrong and provide it with the funding it desperately needs?”
The letter, which was signed by cross-party MPs and addressed to the Secretary of State, asks that “as a matter of urgency, you commit short term funding to sustain the BCA and work with the organisation on a sustainable finding plan for the future, including the establishment of an endowment.”
Paul Reid, the Director of the Black Cultural Archives told the Standard, that the centre was “a serious organisation, it’s a professional organisation, it’s a heritage organisation, which means it sits alongside all the other larger mainstream organisations, and therefore it needs to be supported, it needs to be financed to do that.”
“This work that we do changes lives, it changes communities. It means that when people are trying to make sense of themselves and society, there is a place where that research can take place.”
“The work of the Black Cultural Archives can be aligned to issues around knife crime and gun crime, and it can be aligned to the big issues today around Windrush, around Brexit, around immigration.”
The Black Cultural Archives made headlines earlier this year when the centre expressed its dismay at the destruction of the Windrush landing cards, and called for similar documents to be donated to them in the future.
