Museums and Public Value by Scott Carol A.;

Author:Scott, Carol A.;
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Taylor & Francis Group
Published: 2013-09-15T00:00:00+00:00

Figure 7.1 Former sugar warehouse at West India Quay, now home to Museum of London Docklands

WORKING WITH THE COMMUNITY

To set the agenda effectively it was agreed that the museum should set up a Consultative Group, crucially including black Londoners of African-Caribbean heritage, who would work with the museum to develop an historical narrative that challenged existing historiographies around the slave trade and, through a combination of their association with the museum and personal life experiences, provide an authentic and authoritative voice amongst the many that would be heard in 2007. The Consultative Group comprised individuals who were engaged in relevant work in London and most were already known to the museum through earlier encounters. These included, for example, Harrington Cumberbatch,5 who worked locally with black Londoners with mental health problems, Burt Caesar, a Kittitian who located his surname in the museum’s slave papers from the Mills plantation on St Kitts, and Hakim Adi, a founder member of the Black and Asian Studies Association.6 The most important term of reference for the Group was that it was an equitable partnership. It had an equal voice with the museum on steering all aspects of the gallery development. One example of the work of the Group was to challenge the simplistic notion of abolition that was being repeatedly played out by many at the time. For example, the Wilberforce Museum in Hull was planning to re-open in 2007 following a multi-million pound refurbishment with a focus on the work of William Wilberforce7 who was portrayed as a hero of the abolition movement and the bicentenary. Hull is in the constituency of John Prescott who was Deputy Prime Minister at that time and who was therefore able to foreground the Wilberforce story within political and media circles. The Museum of London Docklands could challenge this interpretation, presenting the more nuanced story of abolition. It could demonstrate that Wilberforce was not the most important agency behind the abolition of the slave trade in the views of many, and that this concept was offensive to many black Londoners. Attention should be drawn, for example, to the actions of enslaved Africans in resisting slavery which eventually made the slave system untenable and to the role of women in eighteenth-century London who formed a pressure group by boycotting the purchase of sugar grown on slave plantations.

The validity of the museum’s approach to create the LSS gallery with its Consultative Group was recognized by the Heritage Lottery Fund, who awarded one of its largest grants at that time. The challenge the museum now faced was how to translate the goodwill, expertise, life experiences and passion of the Consultative Group into a gallery that would be valuable to all visitors, regardless of age, creed or colour. The question was how to create an historical narrative that challenged preconceptions that largely perpetuated the notion of the enslaved as passive ‘chattels’ who were subjugated, and subsequently liberated, by their white oppressors turned emancipators. As important, perhaps, was the aim to create an

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