LONDON.- On the day that the Design Museum formally left Shad Thames in London, they announced the launch of their fundraising campaign, Adopt an Object. The campaign will attempt to raise over £200,000 towards the £1 million needed to cover the construction costs of their new premises in Kensington High Street.

Following an announcement by Director Deyan Sudjic, a packing crate left Shad Thames and began its journey to the museum’s new home, officially commencing the move of the museum's collection. You can see it in August, half way between the two venues in Kings Cross.

Adopt an Object signals a new age of fundraising and audience engagement with a campaign focussed primarily on mobilising the museum’s substantial online audience by asking them each to adopt an object for £5. All donations will help to complete the construction of the new Design Museum in the former Commonwealth Institute in Kensington High Street, west London.

In return each adopter will receive a personalised thank you film showing an iconic object from the Design Museum’s permanent collection making its own way from Shad Thames to the new Kensington site, where the collection will be on free permanent display for the first time in the museum's history. The twelve specially commissioned films, which include a pair of Louboutin heels riding a tube escalator and a Dyson vacuum cleaner crossing the road, will be sent to donors, who will also get their name displayed on the museum’s award-winning website.

To bring this campaign to life the museum worked with The Mill for film production and Fabrique and Q42 for website development.

Adopt an Object will run alongside the museum’s ‘On Loan’ programme, which will see the museum appear at a number of famous London locations before it reopens in its new location on 24 November. A pop-up exhibition featuring a selection of objects that will be on display in the new museum will open on Exhibition Road in October. The museum is teaming up with Barclaycard, a pioneer in rolling out contactless payments in the UK in 2007, to create a portable, contactless donation box and will be loaning out objects, speakers and even its Director as it works with 100% Design, Tent, Jamie Oliver’s Big Feastival, Fresher’s Fairs and Designjunction.

Sir Terence Conran and Stephen Bayley opened the Design Museum in 1989 in a former banana warehouse in Shad Thames. The closing of Shad Thames marks a significant point in the history and development of the museum as it prepares to open a new building that will give it three times more space.

Deyan Sudjic, Director of the Design Museum said: ‘When the Design Museum opened its doors in a former banana ripening warehouse, transformed into a ‘Bauhaus on the Thames’, Shad Thames was still a no go area of abandoned warehouses and empty lots. The whole area has been transformed in the last quarter of a century. We will miss the river, and the views, but we are looking forward to a new home that will serve us even better.’

Terence Conran, founder of the Design Museum commented: ‘If you asked me to pick the single most rewarding achievement in my long design career then I would not hesitate to say founding the Design Museum in London. It was a hugely important moment for design in the UK at the time and for me personally. Since 1989 the museum has always led the way and been the first to show some of the work and inspirations of many of the most important designers and architects on the planet. Today, we are about to move from Shad Thames to new, bigger premises in Kensington, where all our dreams and ambitions to create the best and most important design museum in the world will become a step closer to reality. It will make my long lifetime in design absolutely worthwhile.’

Josephine Chanter, Head of Communications and External Affairs added: ‘A museum has to find the most interesting and compelling ways to engage with its audience to encourage them to become more involved with their public programmes and activities. The Design Museum has to be more self- sustaining than many other cultural organisations and is always looking to explore new funding streams to safeguard its financial future. As an organisation, we truly believe that design has to power to change all of our lives and we hope that the #adoptanobject public campaign is the start of a new and broader base of individual support for the museum going forward.’

The new museum will open on 24 November and will include a free permanent display of its collection in the exhibition Designer Marker User as well as two temporary exhibition spaces, which will open with Designs of the Year and Fear and Love: Reactions to a Complex World.