The Dispossessed
Until 20 December 2011
The Museum of London and Evening Standard highlight poverty in London.
Running as part of the Evening Standard's Dispossessed campaign, this display will feature photographs which tell the extraordinary stories of ordinary Londoners becoming free from the bonds of poverty.
In 1995 the London Evening Standard ran a special report highlighting poverty in the capital, which looked in-depth at the toll poverty took on thousands of ordinary Londoners. These were the people left behind in an economic boom in what, for many others, had been a time of plenty.
The true face of modern poverty in the capital reveals itself not in statistics but in the moving stories of ordinary Londoners. Stories such as Vincent Maduabueke, an 18 year-old student sharing an Islington home with his unemployed mother and sister. Vincent wants to get on but it will be a struggle for him to afford to study at his local college. The Maduabueke’s live cheek-by-jowl with some of the cities wealthiest residents.
The Evening Standard decided to set up a fund with the help of the Community Foundation Network. The generosity of Londoners was overwhelming. In just three weeks Evening Standard readers raised £1 million. Today the fund stands at £7.2 million. It has attracted the support of the government – which has matched the funds raised by readers. It has also enjoyed the support of leading London figures, like Sir Michael Caine, who last year opened the Museum of London’s Galleries of Modern London.
The Dispossessed runs until 20 December 2011 and entry is FREE.
