Plans are being developed to open the world’s largest LGBT museum in London, BuzzFeed News can reveal.

Named Queer Britain: The National LGBTQ+ Museum, the scale and scope of the project will be unrivalled, according to those behind the plans, dwarfing existing museums devoted to queer history – most notably Berlin’s Schwules Museum – and drawing together an unprecedented collection of historical, artistic, political, and cultural artefacts.

Virtual reality experiences, immersive exhibitions, and a vast digital platform are also being proposed to conjure a 3D experience that organisers hope will attract a broad audience and convey untold stories from LGBT history.

If the proposed timeline is met, it could open as early as 2021.

Sadiq Khan, the mayor of London, is believed to have given the museum his backing, BuzzFeed News understands. Discussions are underway with major cultural funding bodies. Big businesses are being approached to dip into their corporate social responsibility pots and donations are being sought from major private donors, as well as the wider public. A location for the site has also been identified and a bid for it is being lodged.

The CEO of the project is author, editor, and charity communications strategist Joseph Galliano, who has assembled a board of trustees and advisers from across the LGBT, financial, and cultural sectors, including Lisa Power, the cofounder of Stonewall and a leading figure in Britain’s LGBT community since the 1980s; Ian Mehrtens, the chief operating officer of London South Bank University; Sandy Nairne, the former director of the National Portrait Gallery; Lord Chris Smith, who was the first out gay MP; and Liz Bingham, a managing partner at Ernst and Young.

A launch event to announce the venture and kick-start funding will take place later this week.

Galliano told BuzzFeed News the museum will reflect every race, gender, and orientation under the LGBT umbrella in a bid to preserve histories that have been ignored or destroyed – before it is too late.