Great expectations
New director Cindy Sughrue tells Eleanor Mills that she has high hopes for the future of London’s Dickens Museum
“I’ve been a lifelong fan of Charles Dickens,” says Cindy Sughrue, who became the director of the Dickens Museum in London last October. The museum holds the world’s most comprehensive collection of material relating to the life and work of the 19th-century novelist. One of Sughrue’s favourite items is a small ivory theatre token.
“It speaks of Dickens the man, beyond what people think of him as a writer,” she says. “He loved the theatre and was an amateur actor himself.”
Perhaps the item appeals to Sughrue because of her background in performance arts. Before she started at the literary museum, she worked as the chief executive for Scottish Ballet for 10 years. Here, she led an £11m capital development project for the Glasgow-based organisation and significantly increased the international profile of Scotland’s national dance company with tours to China, Russia and the US.
Sughrue is originally from Boston but has been based in the UK since 1985. She says that she was ready to make the move from Glasgow to London when the Dickens job came up.
“I had never worked in a museum, nor a literary organisation, but I’ve always found museums to be havens.”
The museum is housed in Dickens’s first family home, 48 Doughty Street, close to the British Museum, where he lived between 1837 and 1839 with his wife and children. He wrote his first serialised story there, The Pickwick Papers, in a productive period that also took in Oliver Twist.
Television boost
Sughrue says that Christmas is the museum’s busiest period, with stories such as Oliver Twist and A Christmas Carol naturally capturing the imagination of many. Visitor numbers normally tail off a little in the new year, but 2016 has brought the gift of the BBC television series Dickensian, which is helping the museum in these quiet months.
To maximise this, Sughrue has helped create a special exhibition on the making of Dickensian, open until 17 April. The displays include costumes and set elements.
A sprinkling of stardust here and there can give a big boost to a small independent museum, so the BBC series has provided welcome attention. The museum also benefits from high-profile patrons such as the actor Simon Callow, who voices Dickens on a recording in the drawing room upstairs in the house.
“We don’t receive any ongoing public funding so it means we absolutely have to keep an eye on finances everyday, from entrance fees to sales in the shop and the cafe,” Sughrue says. “It’s always been a little bit hand to mouth.”
Speaking of which, the young Dickens was left to work in a blacking factory at age 11 when his father was imprisoned in Marshalsea Prison as a debtor, with his mother following suit soon after. Sughrue mentions that she was orphaned in the 1970s. “It had a profound effect on me, as it would do,” she says. “It drives your approach to life, what you feel is meaningful and how you want to help people.
“Dickens experienced homelessness and poverty as a child and it had a profound impact on him as a person and his writing, as well as leading him to his social campaigns in journalism. He was desperately keen to make a difference to people’s lives, and so much of what he campaigned about still resonates today.”
Sughrue is keen to bring these strands out at the museum. Dickens lived through a time of huge social upheaval, with the population of London rising from one million to five million during his lifetime.
“He saw the development of slums, destitution and a city that didn’t have the facilities to cope with such a huge influx of population and the poverty that ensued,” says Sughrue. “He often held parliamentarians to account about major social issues. He even set up a place called Urania Cottage, with the philanthropist Angela Burdett-Coutts of the Coutts banking empire, as a refuge for destitute women trying to avoid or get out of prostitution.”
He was also involved with Thomas Coram’s Foundling Hospital. Sughrue stresses the importance of bringing the interest that Dickens had in social issues to the fore: “We’re working with Wilton’s Music Hall on a project with young people in Tower Hamlets about Victorian music halls. We’re trying to get teenagers engaged with that history and the work of Dickens.
We’re also hoping to collaborate with a charity that does frontline work with poverty-stricken children.”
Goodwill is central to the museum’s outlook, but it also leans heavily on it, with its paid staff supported by a team of 70 volunteers. That modest staff base runs a full education programme, including workshops for small children called Little Dickens. Sughrue wants to broaden the museum’s appeal to other groups.
“We run gin-tasting events, we do tours of the museum by candlelight too, but we haven’t tried late-night openings yet,” Sughrue says. “We know that there’s an audience for this though.”
Growing audiences
Sughrue knew when she was appointed that she was there to take the museum to the next level. When the institution reopened after its £3m refurbishment in 2012 there was a huge surge in visitor numbers, which now stand at 50,000 a year. The museum has remained financially secure and Sughrue’s job is to grow its audiences further.
The real opportunity lies in becoming more outward facing, she says, and thinking beyond the museum’s four walls, including how it connects with audiences virtually.
“We’ve redeveloped our website and we’re looking at how we digitise the collection and bring objects to life online,” she says. Social media is central to this. After all, Dickens was an advocate of new technology. “He would have been one of the first people on Twitter and Instagram, and he’d blog too,” Sughrue says.
During the 2012 bicentenary of Dickens’s birth, all of his literary works were translated into Chinese and the forthcoming syndication of the BBC’s Dickensian series to Japan will bring more opportunities to spread the word about the novelist. This all helps bring more visitors to the museum.
A scheme called Museum Mile does too; a simple cross-promotional leaflet with museums in the surrounding area, which Sughrue hopes to capitalise on in 2020 for the 150th anniversary of Dickens’s death.
Then there’s the museum’s centenary in 2025. For this, Sughrue wants to collaborate with other museums, including building on existing connections with the Charles Dickens Birthplace Museum in Portsmouth and the Dickens House Museum in Kent, to develop a seminal exhibition.
But for now, what we have is the essence of the novelist in one of the houses he lived in. And, just like Dickens’s literature, the museum is accessible and compelling.
“Dickens was a fun, gregarious character,” says Sughrue. “And this house would have been bustling with people visiting and entertaining.” And as tots in a Little Dickens workshop patter past it seems 48 Doughty Street is just as lively as it always was.
She went on to become the general manager at Dance Base, National Centre for Dance Arts from 1994-1997, before she became the head of dance for the Scottish Arts Council for seven years until 2004.
From there she Sughrue is originally from Boston but has moved on to be the chief executive and executive producer at the Scottish Ballet, which is based in Glasgow. She stayed there for 10 years until 2015.
She was briefly a consultant, project manager and theatre producer between April and October 2015, before she took up her post as the director of the Dickens Museum in London.
She replaced Robert Moye, who left to work on a heritage project in Spitalfields, London.
When the building was threatened with demolition in 1925, the Dickens Fellowship ran a campaign to save it. The organisation acquired it in order to establish it as a museum.
The museum’s collection comprises 100,000 items related to Dickens. These include manuscripts, rare editions, personal items and paintings.
A team of 11 full-time equivalents and 70 volunteers run the museum.
The Dickens Museum reopened in late 2012 following a £3m renovation.
Admission is £9 for an adult and the museum attracts about 50,000 visitors a year.
“It speaks of Dickens the man, beyond what people think of him as a writer,” she says. “He loved the theatre and was an amateur actor himself.”
Perhaps the item appeals to Sughrue because of her background in performance arts. Before she started at the literary museum, she worked as the chief executive for Scottish Ballet for 10 years. Here, she led an £11m capital development project for the Glasgow-based organisation and significantly increased the international profile of Scotland’s national dance company with tours to China, Russia and the US.
Sughrue is originally from Boston but has been based in the UK since 1985. She says that she was ready to make the move from Glasgow to London when the Dickens job came up.
“I had never worked in a museum, nor a literary organisation, but I’ve always found museums to be havens.”
The museum is housed in Dickens’s first family home, 48 Doughty Street, close to the British Museum, where he lived between 1837 and 1839 with his wife and children. He wrote his first serialised story there, The Pickwick Papers, in a productive period that also took in Oliver Twist.
Television boost
Sughrue says that Christmas is the museum’s busiest period, with stories such as Oliver Twist and A Christmas Carol naturally capturing the imagination of many. Visitor numbers normally tail off a little in the new year, but 2016 has brought the gift of the BBC television series Dickensian, which is helping the museum in these quiet months.
To maximise this, Sughrue has helped create a special exhibition on the making of Dickensian, open until 17 April. The displays include costumes and set elements.
A sprinkling of stardust here and there can give a big boost to a small independent museum, so the BBC series has provided welcome attention. The museum also benefits from high-profile patrons such as the actor Simon Callow, who voices Dickens on a recording in the drawing room upstairs in the house.
“We don’t receive any ongoing public funding so it means we absolutely have to keep an eye on finances everyday, from entrance fees to sales in the shop and the cafe,” Sughrue says. “It’s always been a little bit hand to mouth.”
Speaking of which, the young Dickens was left to work in a blacking factory at age 11 when his father was imprisoned in Marshalsea Prison as a debtor, with his mother following suit soon after. Sughrue mentions that she was orphaned in the 1970s. “It had a profound effect on me, as it would do,” she says. “It drives your approach to life, what you feel is meaningful and how you want to help people.
“Dickens experienced homelessness and poverty as a child and it had a profound impact on him as a person and his writing, as well as leading him to his social campaigns in journalism. He was desperately keen to make a difference to people’s lives, and so much of what he campaigned about still resonates today.”
Sughrue is keen to bring these strands out at the museum. Dickens lived through a time of huge social upheaval, with the population of London rising from one million to five million during his lifetime.
“He saw the development of slums, destitution and a city that didn’t have the facilities to cope with such a huge influx of population and the poverty that ensued,” says Sughrue. “He often held parliamentarians to account about major social issues. He even set up a place called Urania Cottage, with the philanthropist Angela Burdett-Coutts of the Coutts banking empire, as a refuge for destitute women trying to avoid or get out of prostitution.”
He was also involved with Thomas Coram’s Foundling Hospital. Sughrue stresses the importance of bringing the interest that Dickens had in social issues to the fore: “We’re working with Wilton’s Music Hall on a project with young people in Tower Hamlets about Victorian music halls. We’re trying to get teenagers engaged with that history and the work of Dickens.
We’re also hoping to collaborate with a charity that does frontline work with poverty-stricken children.”
Goodwill is central to the museum’s outlook, but it also leans heavily on it, with its paid staff supported by a team of 70 volunteers. That modest staff base runs a full education programme, including workshops for small children called Little Dickens. Sughrue wants to broaden the museum’s appeal to other groups.
“We run gin-tasting events, we do tours of the museum by candlelight too, but we haven’t tried late-night openings yet,” Sughrue says. “We know that there’s an audience for this though.”
Dickens often held politicians to account about major social issues...I think it’s important to bring that to the fore."
Growing audiences
Sughrue knew when she was appointed that she was there to take the museum to the next level. When the institution reopened after its £3m refurbishment in 2012 there was a huge surge in visitor numbers, which now stand at 50,000 a year. The museum has remained financially secure and Sughrue’s job is to grow its audiences further.
The real opportunity lies in becoming more outward facing, she says, and thinking beyond the museum’s four walls, including how it connects with audiences virtually.
“We’ve redeveloped our website and we’re looking at how we digitise the collection and bring objects to life online,” she says. Social media is central to this. After all, Dickens was an advocate of new technology. “He would have been one of the first people on Twitter and Instagram, and he’d blog too,” Sughrue says.
During the 2012 bicentenary of Dickens’s birth, all of his literary works were translated into Chinese and the forthcoming syndication of the BBC’s Dickensian series to Japan will bring more opportunities to spread the word about the novelist. This all helps bring more visitors to the museum.
A scheme called Museum Mile does too; a simple cross-promotional leaflet with museums in the surrounding area, which Sughrue hopes to capitalise on in 2020 for the 150th anniversary of Dickens’s death.
Then there’s the museum’s centenary in 2025. For this, Sughrue wants to collaborate with other museums, including building on existing connections with the Charles Dickens Birthplace Museum in Portsmouth and the Dickens House Museum in Kent, to develop a seminal exhibition.
But for now, what we have is the essence of the novelist in one of the houses he lived in. And, just like Dickens’s literature, the museum is accessible and compelling.
“Dickens was a fun, gregarious character,” says Sughrue. “And this house would have been bustling with people visiting and entertaining.” And as tots in a Little Dickens workshop patter past it seems 48 Doughty Street is just as lively as it always was.
Cindy Sughrue at a glance
After studying a PhD in the Philosophy of Dance at the University of Sheffield, Cindy Sughrue became the director of Collective Gallery in Edinburgh for four years, until 1994.She went on to become the general manager at Dance Base, National Centre for Dance Arts from 1994-1997, before she became the head of dance for the Scottish Arts Council for seven years until 2004.
From there she Sughrue is originally from Boston but has moved on to be the chief executive and executive producer at the Scottish Ballet, which is based in Glasgow. She stayed there for 10 years until 2015.
She was briefly a consultant, project manager and theatre producer between April and October 2015, before she took up her post as the director of the Dickens Museum in London.
She replaced Robert Moye, who left to work on a heritage project in Spitalfields, London.
The Dickens Museum at a glance
The museum is dedicated to the life and times of the author Charles Dickens (1812-1870), and was his home for two years from 1837-39.When the building was threatened with demolition in 1925, the Dickens Fellowship ran a campaign to save it. The organisation acquired it in order to establish it as a museum.
The museum’s collection comprises 100,000 items related to Dickens. These include manuscripts, rare editions, personal items and paintings.
A team of 11 full-time equivalents and 70 volunteers run the museum.
The Dickens Museum reopened in late 2012 following a £3m renovation.
Admission is £9 for an adult and the museum attracts about 50,000 visitors a year.