The Vagina Museum with Florence Schechter

Listen to "The Vagina Museum with Florence Schetcher" on Spreaker.

This week, Hannah is joined by the founder of the world’s first Vagina Museum: Florence Schechter. Florence talks about how the Vagina Museum came to be, and obstacles she faced along the way - mostly to do with having ‘vagina’ in the name! They chat about everything from funding to being shadow-banned on Twitter, and also what the future of the Vagina Museum will look like. Hannah and Florence also share their best vagina and animal sex facts!

Read the episode transcript here!

SHOW NOTES

What we chat about…

The first exhibition at the Vagina Museum
How the Museum came about
- Doing it in reverse to how a museum is normally made
- Taking inspiration from other new museums, which all focus on sharing a particular story
- Funding from donations
The difficulty in being seen as a legitimate museum
The struggle to get charity status, with having ‘vagina’ in the name becoming an obstacle
Using crowd-funding
Every museum needs a gift shop!
Being shadow banned on Twitter and what that means
How did the Vagina Museum get funding? Was it difficult?
What does the future look like for the Vagina Museum?
Vagina facts and animal sex facts
What events are coming up at the Vagina Museum

USEFUL LINKS

Find out more about the Vagina Museum: https://www.vaginamuseum.co.uk/
The Muff Busters exhibition: https://www.vaginamuseum.co.uk/pages/exhibitions
Queer Britain Museum: https://queerbritain.org.uk/
East End Women’s Museum: https://eastendwomensmuseum.org/
The Museum of British Colonialism: https://www.museumofbritishcolonialism.org/
Iceland’s Penis Museum: https://phallus.is/en/
Denise Rosenboom, who makes the vulva pendants sold at the Vagina Museum: http://deniserosenboom.blogspot.com/ Buy the pendant: https://www.vaginamuseum.co.uk/products/pussy-pendant
The Vagina Museum launch party: https://www.vaginamuseum.co.uk/pages/events#/event/opening-party-1
Institute of Sexology, Wellcome Collection: https://wellcomecollection.org/exhibitions/W31ooSkAACIAP4So

MORE ABOUT FLORENCE SCHECHTER

Florence is a science communicator, presenter, comedian and is also the founder of the Vagina Museum. She has previously been a part of the Wellcome Trust’s funded ‘Talent Factory’ mentorship programme for emerging science communication talent in the UK. She started her project to build the world’s first bricks and mortar museum about vaginas in 2017, and it has now opened in Camden!

Find out more about Florence on her website, Twitter and Instagram.