Help Save The Cinema Museum

In September 2018, Cormoran Strike actor Tom Burke led a fundraising event at the Cinema Museum, London, to help save the museum and prevent it from closing.

The event involved a glass of champagne on arrival with some time to explore the museum before Tom introduced us to a film of his choice: The Burbs, starring Tom Hanks.

After the film, Tom Burke answered questions from the audience and then did a meet and greet/signing.

Unfortunately, the Cinema Museum is in danger of closing again after the impact of COVID-19. This time, actors Toby Jones (voice of Dobby in the Harry Potter films) and Rory Kinnear (Barry in The Casual Vacancy) have united in a Crowdfunding in hopes of raising £60,000 to save the museum.

Please consider donating to and sharing the Crowdfunder page, which you can find here: www.crowdfunder.co.uk/reopen-and-reimagine-the-cinema-museum

Any amount you can give would be hugely appreciated.

Below is a letter from Toby Jones and Rory Kinnear.

A MESSAGE FOR YOU FROM TOBY JONES AND RORY KINNEAR

“Dear friends,

Please join us help save a local and beloved treasure. Many small charities, community enterprises and arts venues fell through the gaps of COVID-emergency funding; for some, it will be terminal. We can’t allow COVID to destroy The Cinema Museum. All they need to do to get through COVID is raise £60,000 – we are helping them and they are almost there!

As local Lambeth residents we are both very proud to have such a magnificent museum and community asset in our home borough. The Cinema Museum is a unique Museum and collection in a beautiful building of local and cinematic importance. Its run by passionate and committed local volunteers who care for its home ‘The Masters House’, once the workhouse home of Charlie Chaplin, his mother and brother – and according to Charlie Chaplin’s children, ’the nearest thing the UK has to a Chaplin Museum’.

The year before COVID hit, Londoner’s voted The Cinema Museum ‘London’s most loved Cultural Venue’ (Time Out LOVE LONDON Award) and ‘London’s Best Silent Film Venue’ (Silent London). The Museum is packed with libraries, archives, memorabilia, photographs and artefacts from the everyday to the rare. But it is the uses that The Cinema Museum puts its buildings, collections and volunteer workforce to, that carries the most social benefit. When the Museum is not being used for academic research, public tours, screenings and events, it is used for education, wellbeing and environmental projects for local schools, universities and care-givers. And when that’s not happening, it throws its doors open for public and community use – which the Museum heavily subsidises (and often provided free to local charities and community groups if they have no budget). If you have visited The Cinema Museum then you will know that it is magical – but its also pretty damn useful!

So it seems that at last we, the people, will have a vaccination for COVID, but what of the places and the experiences we love and the resources and support we need to heal? How many and how much of that will be lost forever? Please don’t let The Cinema Museum be a COVID-casualty – we will need it as we rebuild our lives.

If you have donated already, thank you – you are now part of the rescue team! But if that is news to you, then we urge you to help us protect their collection, their home and their important work by making a donation to help them survive COVID.

Join us now! We are almost there; we have just a fewdays to go to, so please take a look at this …

https://www.crowdfunder.co.uk/reopen-and-reimagine-the-cinema-museum”