| Summary: |
On 10 November 2007, Museum in Docklands will open the only
permanent gallery in London to examine the city’s involvement
in transatlantic slavery and its consequences on the capital. Marking
the bicentenary of the Abolition of the Slave Trade Act 1807 by
Britain, the new gallery called London, Sugar & Slavery is part
of a series of events and projects planned by the Museum for 2007
and 2008, and which received the full support of the International
Scientific Committee of the UNESCO Slave Route Project. Prof Rex
Nettleford, President of the Committee will attend the event.
The gallery reveals how London’s involvement in slavery has
shaped the capital since the seventeenth century. It will debunk
the myth that London was a minor player in the trade by showing
that it funded much of the city’s industrial and financial
success. From Jamaica Road to the Bank of England, from the merchant
houses of Blackheath to the nation’s art collections, profits
from this most lucrative trade shaped the metropolis. The most challenging
part of the gallery will shed light on the vital role that Africans
played in liberating themselves from enslavement. Their resistance
to accepting a life of slavery and their rebellions in the Caribbean
islands forced the British establishment to re-think its economic
and foreign policy and inspired the public to help campaign for
abolition.
The gallery will include personal accounts, film, music and over
140 objects including a table at which negotiations over the Abolition
Act were hammered out, and art from the cultures that were impacted
by the transatlantic slave trade. Visitors will be able to record
their own responses to the subject on a comments wall, and a performance
area and exhibition space for community groups will complete the
exhibit.
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