Exhibition on ‘Town vs Gown’ divide opens at Museum of Cambridge

The exhibition looks at how the divide shapes the way students and residents access public space differently

“Lucy Walker, the Museum’s Chair of Trustees, praised the exhibition for ‘ask[ing] brave questions that go straight to the heart of community issues in Cambridge’”Flickr

by Serge Isman

This article is 4 years old

Monday August 30 2021, 2:34pm

An exhibition exploring the “town vs gown” divide opened last week (27/08) at the Museum of Cambridge.

The exhibition, titled ‘Places and Spaces: Exploring Cambridge through Town and Gown’, is curated by a team of community curators who wanted to ask how the “town vs gown” divide shapes who has access to different spaces in the city.

The 99 responses to a survey conducted by the curators in July 2021, which asked the public whether they thought the divide exists, and if so, how it affects their relationship with Cambridge, form the backbone of the exhibition.

One of its key themes is the disparity in access to the city’s spaces between those identifying with the university and town communities: 55% of survey respondents identifying with the university community felt that they could access all of Cambridge, while 73% of those identifying with the town community felt that there were parts of the city inaccessible to them.

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Lucy Walker, the Museum’s Chair of Trustees, in a press release to Varsity, praised the exhibition for “ask[ing] brave questions that go straight to the heart of community issues in Cambridge,” and hoped that it would “start meaningful conversations with communities in and around Cambridge about what really matters.”

Annie Davis, Development Manager, said: “We couldn’t do this without the help of our funders, the National Lottery Heritage Fund and Cambridge City Council, as well as the generosity of individual donors who supported the Museum throughout our closure during 2020 and 2021.”

‘Places and Spaces: Exploring Cambridge through Town and Gown’ will run at the Museum of Cambridge until 7th November 2021.

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