Permanent Bristol slave trade museum "incredibly important" says expert
Deputy Mayor Asher Craig says the city council is actively pursuing funding for one
It is "incredibly important" that Bristol builds a monument to the victims of the slave trade.
That's what an education expert has told us, after the city's deputy mayor revealed in a blog that Bristol City Council is pursuing funding for one, as well as a permanent museum about Bristol's involvement.
The idea has been discussed for years but became even more prominent after the toppling of a statue to slave trader Edward Colston in Bristol in 2020.
We have spoken to University of Bristol professor of education Leon Tikly, who also works with UNESCO on inclusive education for all.
"We're approaching in 10 years' time the 200th anniversary of the abolition of slavery and it's really important that as a city we face up to and understand that legacy of the slave trade (and) the extent to which it was integral to the development of the city of Bristol for many, many years," he said.
Professor Tikly says the legacy of the trade "continues to be manifest" in the way people from the black community, he says, are failed by the education system and Bristol, whilst it's "really important to acknowledge" the achievements of people with black African and black Caribbean heritage.
"It's really important that future generations of learners are sensitised to these issues so that we never see the scourge of slavery in the city again," he said.
In a blog post shared on the Bristol Mayor's website last Friday, (24 March), deputy mayor Asher Craig said she and others are working to ensure the slave trade and it's impact on Bristol is suitably recognised.
"2023 is an ideal time to reflect on and better understand our past as we continue simultaneous work as a city to tackle racism and injustice," she said.
"This year brings some significant milestones in Bristol such as the 650th Anniversary of our independent county status, the 60th Anniversary of the Bus Boycott, and the 75th Anniversary of Windrush.
"This reflection and our experience of the last few years have also brought a growing ambition for this process to lead to an outcome which is permanent, of truly significant scale and ambition.
"As has been pointed out by community leaders for at least a decade, Bristol deserves a national and international monument to honour the victims of the slave trade.
"This is not a quick campaign, but an enormous undertaking – and one which we are actively seeking major funding towards.
"We hope to establish an ongoing way to articulate the stories of those people as well as their forebears and descendants, correcting the many and widespread misunderstandings which have caused and continue to cause extreme pain and trauma for so many people in Bristol, and across the United Kingdom."
Temporary exhibitions about the slave trade and Bristol's involvement have existed at times in the past.
From 2002 to 2008 there was a British Empire and Commonwealth Museum by Bristol Temple Meads which touched on the issue and after the toppling of the Colston statue it was put on temporary display at the M Shed.
Campaign groups including the Bristol Radical History Collective and Countering Colston are calling for a permanent site to be created in the city centre, called the Abolition Shed.
In 2017 they presented a plan to create it in two disused transit sheds on the harbourside and later a second idea proposed using an empty building near Pero's Bridge, but neither ideas have come to fruition.
"It’s clear that the city will need to provide land to custom-build a bespoke, fitting museum or story-house and our administration continues to explore this," Asher Craig said.
"We cannot afford to do something so important on the cheap, opportunistically converting derelict buildings which did not exist before 1833/34, let alone have meaningful links to the history we are seeking to remember and commemorate.
"This is part of a considered process.
"Members of the LSG travelled to Hanover, Bordeaux, and Berlin, to understand how others have worked though issues of memorialisation, contested histories, identity, and belonging.
"We draw inspiration for the approaches of the Memorial to the Victims of the Holocaust and the Museum of the Jewish People and took the time to discuss these themes with the Mayor of Bordeaux during his recent visit to Bristol."
The LSG, deputy mayor Craig says, is also working on a final action plan for commissioning artists to design a permanent slave trade memorial.
"Part of the legacy of the slave trade was that it robs people of their livelihoods, their identities, their liberties, their freedoms, for generations," professor Tikly said.
"So I would argue that there's a very strong reparative case to be made for investing in something of this nature, provided that it can be truly educational."
You can read the deputy mayor's blog in full here.