Battersea Arts Centre announces new museum and 2017 programme

Battersea Arts Centre have announced they will be launching a new museum as well as their new season.

The BAC Moving Museum will move around the building as well as the borough of Wandsworth and further afield in order to create 'emotional connections between people and their heritage'. There will be two collections that trace the history of the borough and of the building and will include family workshops, heritage festivals, interactive installations and performances, a digital archive, talks and tours.

London Stories will head up the first collection in the museum. Across a series of candlelit rooms, the group will share past and present stories of of arriving in London and trying to make the city a new home.

The new season will be entitled Cash, Capitalism and Corporations and will feature Red Shed – comedian and campaigner Mark Thomas' autobiographical trilogy, based on his return to the Labour club in Wakefield where he first performed. Running from February and March 2017, commentators, academics and activists will be brought together as part of a programme of talks and debates.

Elsewhere in the building, live music will return to the venue in the summer as well as the musical series Borderless which will feature artists from around the globe as well as UK talent. The line-up will be announced on 11 May.

Little Bulb Theatre prepare to launch the Courtyard as a new open-air theatre as proposals for the Grand Hall rebuild are being considered for planning permission following the devasting fire of 2015. In collaboration with Stirling Prize Award-winning architects Haworth Tompkins, redeveloped spaces around the venue are preparing to open and artists will move into three new floors of bedrooms. Twelve spaces at the front of the building will also have the ability to form an interconnected performance space.