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After years of work, the Quentin Blake Centre for Illustration has finally opened its doors to the public. Hadley Stewart sits down with the centre’s director, Lindsey Glen, to reflect on this journey.
Lindsey Glen, the director of the Quentin Blake Centre for Illustration, is unlocking a thick padlock that is wrapped around the centre’s front gates, as she welcomes me for today’s interview. Founded by and named after the renowned illustrator, the centre in London’s Clerkenwell opened a week before I arrive. Today, however, the gates are closed because it is the start of the week. The centre, Glen jokes, is closed for the first two days of the week to recover from a busy weekend of visitors; yet inside we find many of her team working behind the scenes in preparation for its Wednesday opening.
Walking through the entrance and into the centre’s shop on this sunny June morning, natural light pours in from the skylights above us. The paving stones from outside follow us indoors and cover the shop’s floor; an important and deliberate feature, Glen explains, in ushering visitors into the centre from outside. The need to make the centre a welcoming place for all is seemingly at the forefront of their philosophy.
In one corner of the shop’s floor are the remains of tracks for the coal carts that once rattled through here, a first clue of the site’s heritage. Known as New River Head, the Islington site was once at the end of an artificial river, that was created in the early seventeenth century as part of a pioneering engineering project to channel drinking water into the capital from Hertfordshire. As Glen and I walk around the corner and into the cafe, which was once a boiler house, this nod to the centre’s historical roots and ties to water becomes even more apparent. An almost five-metre-long mural by Quentin Blake hangs across one of the cafe’s walls. The piece’s shades of blue set against a white canvas match the white walls and the roof’s blue beams.
A Bridge to the Past (2026) is a mural that was commissioned for the centre’s opening and was unveiled earlier this month. Glen explains that the illustration depicts a bridge over the New River with figures from different eras walking over it. Blake took inspiration from Isaac Cruikshank’s 1796 engraving of men fishing in the New River dressed in formal attire.
“I hope that there is a spirit of Quentin that runs through what we’re doing here,” says Glen. “I think in his work, you see that sense of curiosity, that enormous compassion and empathy. I very much hope that we are true to those values and we do him proud.”
Moving through the library with over one thousand books, we ascend the central staircase that brings us to two floors of exhibition spaces. On the first floor, an exhibition by the multi-disciplinary illustrator Murugiah, whose work reflects on his life and identity, and is inspired by his Sri Lankan heritage and Welsh upbringing. ‘Ever Feel Like…’ is the artist’s first solo show, and invites visitors into a kaleidoscopic and sometimes macabre world.
As Glen and I reach the second floor, she invites me to look up. The staircase has been built within the remains of the engine house’s once tall chimney, until it was mostly demolished in the 1950s. Today, visitors can still look into the original shaft of the octagonal chimney, now capped off with three portholes, which on a day like today, allow beams of sunlight to fill the landing where we have paused.
The second floor’s exhibition space will be a permanent home for work by Quentin Blake. ‘Performance’ is a collection of works by the illustrator that explore his theatrical influences, from acrobatics to Shakespeare. What’s more, visitors can get a glimpse of Blake’s process, thanks to rarely seen preparatory materials that are now housed in glass cases. Glen is also keen to point out Blake’s more recent work, Macbeth (2023), a collection of illustrations of Shakespeare’s characters portrayed as birds; shown publicly for the first time here.
The final opening exhibition is located in the old coal stores. Queer as Comics is a collection of comics, strip cartoons, graphic novels and zines that tell stories of fantasy, identity and resistance. Curated by Paul Gravett and with pieces that date from the 1940s until the present day, this exhibition reflects decades of LGBTQ+ perspectives and stories – from censorship to the partial decriminalisation of homosexuality, the Aids crisis, Section 28, and the modern-day stories of the trans community.
Illustrator Quentin Blake has been campaigning for this centre since 2002 (Alex Ingram)For someone who has spent most of her adult life living in and around the north London borough of Islington, now the new home of the Quentin Blake Centre for Illustration, this moment is particularly special for Glen. During our tour of the centre’s outdoor spaces, she points to beyond the site’s perimeter, telling me that she used to get the bus past here for more than a decade, without even knowing this cluster of Grade-II listed buildings existed.
As we sit down opposite each other in the centre’s large creative studio, I begin by asking her how she is feeling now that the doors have finally opened. “It’s brilliant,” she beams. “It’s been a real joy to bring these buildings into public use and breathe new life into them. We’ve been on a journey to get here, in terms of bringing the project together, so seeing people now coming and using the space is brilliant.”
Glen joined the charity at the end of 2020, having been familiar with the House of Illustration, the organisation’s former name, by visiting some of their touring exhibitions across the country, as well as their rented space in King’s Cross, London. Yet one of Glen’s fondest memories, it seems to me, is of her attending a drawing workshop with her young family in 2011, which was also being attended by Quentin Blake himself. To her amazement, she recalls, Blake came and sat down at a neighbouring table. “It was the most wonderful and inspiring thing,” she says of being captivated by watching the illustrator as he began drawing.
When the job of director came up, Glen was working in the performing arts sector. She remembers getting a feeling when she first came across the advert. I ask her what it was like joining the organisation during the pandemic. “I suppose there were two aspects,” she replies. “There was a global pandemic going on, but also the organisation had just embarked on this huge change journey.”
The site where we are seated today was acquired by the charity in 2019, a relocation from their King’s Cross building that is now home to Queer Britain, the UK’s national LGBTQ+ museum. When the Covid pandemic hit in March 2020, the architectural competition for the renovation works was still underway. Glen credits the previous director and the wider team for, as she puts it, keeping the organisation steadily moving forward.
Meanwhile, like many stuck at home during lockdown, Glen and her team found themselves with time on their hands. It was this time that allowed, she believes, for moments of reflection and creativity. “We had time to really consider what we wanted to be,” she describes. “So thinking about the intersection between heritage and illustration, why it was so exciting that we were on this amazing site. And how we would tell those stories and do that in a really integrated way.”
The pandemic also brought up the question of what cultural spaces should look like in a post-pandemic world. As we walk around the outdoor spaces today, Glen explains how she wants to bring illustration into the outdoors. She points out areas where people can come for picnics, the chalk drawings covering some of the paving stones, as well as the greenery and flowers that are now growing here. The indoor spaces in the centre are equally important. Glen brings up the need for more cool spaces, in the context of warmer summer months, as well as the notion of having public living rooms for people to come and take time out of their days. “I think the way that the world was changing at the time [of the pandemic], has influenced the project and what you see today,” she explains.
Speaking of a changing world, the day before our interview the prime minister announced a social media ban for under-16s in the UK. When I bring this up, I suggest that it could be argued that these spaces have never been more important as a space for young people to connect with each other and their wider communities. “Absolutely,” nods Glen, who says fostering a sense of community was already on the centre’s agenda. “We’ve worked really hard to try and make these spaces feel like they’re for everyone, and consultation has been a really big part of that.” The charity met with over forty local community, health and education groups as part of developing the project.
It is Glen’s belief that the centre is a place that will attempt to break down barriers that some face when entering museums, galleries and other cultural spaces. “It feels like a place where everything is quite readable, quite translatable,” says Glen. “Where you don’t need a huge background in the fine arts to understand what’s on the walls, or to understand what you’re being told. Where things feel quite relatable, but also there is some weight to it. I think that applies as much to young people as it applies to adults who visit the centre.”
When I first read about the opening of the Quentin Blake Centre, one of the first things that stood out for me was that one of the opening exhibitions was dedicated to LGBTQ+ comics. What was the thought process behind Queer as Comics? “In all our exhibitions, we want to show the full breadth of illustration, and the way that illustration has changed our world,” she replies, before telling me about the centre’s slogan: illustration changes everything. “It’s a fundamental art form that shapes our world, and it’s a really powerful tool for sharing stories and ideas.”
The House of Illustration’s last exhibition was of work by Tom of Finland, which ran from March to June 2020. The Finnish artist is perhaps best known for his stylised erotic art and influence on queer culture, at a time of criminalisation and stigmatisation towards the LGBTQ+ community. In researching that exhibition with curator Paul Gravett and the centre’s artistic director Olivia Ahmad, they discovered a wealth of comics, comic strips, zines and graphic novels being used as a tool for sharing queer experiences. “We wanted to explore that further,” explains Glen of the decision to have an exhibition with several LGBTQ+ artists. In fact, she says that one of the biggest curation challenges for the Queer as Comics exhibition was deciding which pieces to include. There is a section at the end of the exhibition acknowledging those who were not included in the final selection.
Queer as Comics is a reminder of the historical challenges that the queer community has faced, as well as current threats. “It goes through periods of censorship and periods of resistance,” explains Glen. “It charts how cartoonists responded to Section 28 and the early days of the Aids crisis. And it goes through to webcomics and storytelling today, so it’s a very wide-ranging exhibition. It felt like a really relevant and important story to be telling.”
But as well as wanting to display the importance of illustration in the context of LGBTQ+ storytelling, Glen says that Queer as Comics is also important to illustrators themselves. She highlights a 2025 report published by the Comics Impact Collective, an independent organisation that raises awareness of the cultural impact of comics, which found that 62% of creators identify as LGBTQ+.
Moreover, Glen argues that for young people today queer comics are still very much part of the cultural zeitgeist. “We’ve not even mentioned Heartstopper yet,” she laughs, bringing up the coming-of-age webcomic and graphic novel series by Alice Oseman. After three series on Netflix, a movie is set to be released this summer. “This is not something that’s rooted in the past, this is something that is part of a cultural phenomenon today.”
Whilst Section 28 has been abolished, I venture, there are still lingering conversations today within certain schools or political parties that might argue that young people should not have access to an LGBTQ+ themed exhibition like this. What does Glen make of this? “Artistically it felt like a really strong strand of work to be showing,” she replies, before adding that the centre’s three opening exhibitions display a range of work and ideas. “So I think Queer as Comics fits really neatly into that. I also think that young people visiting the centre will find things in all of the exhibitions that are relevant to them, their age and their own stories. They will relate to what they most connect with. It’s all part of that range of work, as you would see in any museum or gallery.”
For the Queer as Comics exhibition, Glen tells me that the centre sought the advice from a panel of queer comic makers and curators, to guide and shape the exhibition. More broadly, they have also worked with various community groups, including a community access panel made up of people with lived experiences of different disabilities, to further develop themselves as an inclusive organisation and place to visit. “They’ve really challenged us to make sure that we break down barriers, or try and avoid barriers in the first place,” she says of the experience. “I think that continued exchange is so important.”
The three opening exhibitions sit behind a paywall, with the centre’s shop, cafe, library and outdoor spaces all available to visitors free of charge. It is something that Glen says the organisation has thought long and hard about – the idea of balancing the running costs of the centre, whilst still having spaces within it that are free for people to come and be in.
“This is the most challenging time for the arts that I’ve worked in my 25 year career,” replies Glen when I ask about the current financial climate. The project cost £12.5m, which included acquiring the site, the construction work, and keeping the organisation going during that time of transition. Alongside donations from philanthropists and charitable trusts, the National Lottery Heritage Fund provided £3.75m worth of funding, and Arts Council England gave a project grant for the Murugiah exhibition. The charity does not receive any core public funding. “That really does put pressure on us,” acknowledges Glen. “So we are reliant on the earned income from admissions and retail from our shop, as well as fundraising.” She also credits those who have already signed up to support the centre through their membership programme. “We are hugely grateful to those people.”
The Quentin Blake Centre for Illustration is the UK’s only public arts organisation dedicated to illustration, and is the product of decades of work by the illustrator himself. Since starting the charity in 2002, Blake set out on a campaign for a centre that would champion illustrations in all of its forms. Now aged 93, I ask Glen how involved Blake is with the new centre? “He’s our founder and we also have this incredibly close relationship with his archive, so we talked to Quentin a lot, particularly about what we’re going to display around his archive,” she replies. Whilst Blake does not participate in the curation of the exhibits in the centre, Glen tells me that he is extremely passionate about the work they are doing here and is a great lover of the centre’s architecture and the site’s heritage.
In fact, Glen says that Blake’s main focus these days is still his craft, “All he wants to do is draw. He draws every day, it’s like breathing for him.”
The Quentin Blake Centre for Illustration, the UK’s only permanent place for illustration, is now open in Clerkenwell, London.
