Dear all

Last night was the latest public meeting at The Cinema Museum and I know that some of you were able to be there.  It gave us a chance to hear how things have been progressing with the new owners, Anthology.

The good news is that The Cinema Museum has a new lease until November 2019 and is able to continue to plan and deliver great events.  Sadly it wasn’t all encouraging news. We understand that Anthology initially said they will build around The Cinema Museum and agree a way for us to own our home, but four months have passed and they have still not begun any substantive discussions.

They might not be holding discussions with The Cinema Museum yet but apparently they are holding private meetings about their planning applications with Lambeth Council and other local groups - stating that they will ‘talk to us’ AFTER they have planning permission in place.  When, presumably, they can do exactly what they want.

Anthology are a ‘for profit’ property developer, who are funded by a profit hungry American asset management company called Oaktree Capital Management. Their aim is to maximize the financial profit they can make from this premium site. As soon as they get their planning permission through they could either try to evict The Cinema Museum or they will just sell us on again (as SLaM did) to the highest bidder and we will never get the security of tenure we need to be a sustainable museum.

Years of broken promises from SLaM have made us a bit wary.

So, I have updated the petition wording and directed our petition, and all future signatures to Mark Dickinson, Managing Director of Anthology, and their investors, since they are now the decision makers. Lets hope he is prepared to respond to our concerns and that they will start sensible discussions about the Museums future Now!

Please keep sharing and encouraging others to sign, our future still depends on it!