London's V&A East Museum opens this weekend: What you need to know

A major new London attraction opens this weekend, the V&A East Museum. Here’s what you need to know about it.

V&A East Museum opens on April 18th, with a big exhibition on the history of black music in Britain.

What's on?

The Music is Black: A British Story is all about music figures and movements from 1900 onwards, and features items from performers like Little Simz — due to play at South London’s Cross the Tracks festival next month — and Joan Armatrading.

“Spanning four continents, this is a story of excellence, struggle, resilience and joy,” reads the blurb.

It will also feature Stormzy’s famous stab vest from his 2019 Glastonbury performance, if that will tip you over into a visit.

Entry costs £22.50, or £24.50 at the weekend, although at present tickets for the opening weekend are sold out. You can also get through the gate with a V&A membership, which costs £86 a year for an Individual Membership via Direct Debit.

You don’t need to fork out for the exhibition to visit the V&A East Museum, though. Entry is free, and that gets you into the permanent galleries, dubbed Why We Make.

These comprise “over 500 objects” from figures including Leigh Bowery and Althea McNish.

What is the V&A East Museum?

And now’s probably the time to touch on what V&A East Museum is actually about. The website describes it as “a new kind of museum,” one that looks at “how creativity changes the world, rooted in the communities and voices that are shaping global culture right now.”

A museum about creativity may sound an amorphous concept, but it’s clearly positioned in opposition to a lot of the depressing narrowing and hardening of thought we’re seeing influence politics across the world at present. V&A East Museum director Gus Casely-Hayford said as much in a column for The Guardian last year.

“That drive to be inclusive is what good museums were created to deliver,” he wrote. "It is easy writing the diversity action plan, but having the moral courage to stand up for those principles when they are needed – that is heroic.”

Where is V&A East Museum?

V&A East Museum is found in East London’s Olympic Park area in Stratford, just a 10-minute or so walk from the epic V&A East Storehouse, which opened last year.

Your closest stations are Stratford, Stratford International and Hackney Wick, although each is a solid 10-odd-minute walk away.

The museum building itself is quite something to behold, variously described as alien and ungainly in early reviews. It was a £135 million project, designed by O'Donnell + Tuomey.

• South London's Horniman Museum is getting a major revamp next month

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