Slavery and Liverpool

[Kev]

THE country's first museum dedicated to the slave trade will be established in Liverpool.

A £10m plan to set up the National Museum and Centre for the Understanding of Transatlantic Slavery at Albert Dock was unveiled today.

The new attraction, which won Lottery funding, will feature dynamic and thought-provoking displays about a shameful chapter in British history.

A resource centre where people will be able to research information about the slave trade will also be set up.

The facility is to be split between exhibition space at the Maritime Museum and the former Dock Traffic Office, which is currently home to Granada television.

It is hoped the new museum will be ready for 2007, Liverpool's 800th birthday and the 200th anniversary of the abolition of the slave trade. The resource centre will open two years later.

Loyd Grossman, chairman of National Museums Liverpool, said: "The new museum will challenge preconceptions and address issues of relevance to everyone today."

Museum bosses believe Liverpool is the perfect location for the national archive because of the key role it played in the industry.

Thousands of slaves were brought to the city from Africa before crossing the Atlantic to work in the West Indies and North America.

Displays at the new museum will cover issues such as freedom, identity, human rights, reparations, racial discrimination and cultural change.

The Maritime Museum already has a gallery dedicated to transatlantic slavery, but the new facility will allow it to expand.

The Heritage Lottery Fund today announced it would donate 1.65m to the museum.

Source

[Paul D]

This was first mentioned a while back and then it all went quiet but I'm glad to see it's back on the agenda again.

[Kev]

10m slave trade museum will be biggest in country

Read more

[Kev]

National Museums Liverpool are appealing for private investors to finance the centre, which they claim will become as significant as New York's Holocaust Museum.

More....

[Paul D]

Time to remember city's slave past.

NEXT month's Slavery Remembrance Day will set the scene for the opening of Liverpool's International Slavery Museum in 2007.

Otterspool Promenade will play host to an afternoon of free cultural events and entertainment on August 23.

And the artistic director of the Institute of Contemporary Arts, Ekow Eshun, will be the key speaker.

This year's day will start with an interfaith service at St Nicholas parish church at the Pier Head. Events at Otterspool include a food and exhibition marquee, as well as children's activities .

There is also a chance to learn more about Merseyside Maritime Museum's new International Slavery Museum due to open on August 23, 2007.

[Kev]

Its all going down at Otterspool eh? Cheers Paul

[Paul D]

Its all going down at Otterspool eh? Cheers Paul

It certainly is that might be worth a visit also great news about our new museum eh.

[Kev]

brill news

[Paul D]

I was really impressed with the maritime museum when I last payed a visit and the slavery museum blew me away even though it was pretty small so I can't wait for this bigger version dedicated solely to the International slave trade,and it'll be open for 2008 when we will finally start to see signs of us getting our city back to were it belongs.

[bazzacat]

Pleased to hear this. should be a welcome "attraction", certainly somewhere to contemplate what went on

[Paul D]

Forget all the developments that are going on because it's little things like this that makes a city great in my opinion.

[Max]

**** hippies need to get over it.

We acknowledge it already and relised it happened but times goes on and it sucks to hold a grudge, especially since it was our ancestors not us!

[Sloyne]

We acknowledge it already and relised it happened but times goes on and it sucks to hold a grudge, especially since it was our ancestors not us!

If "OUR" ancestors were the priviledged class and thier agents, which mine were not. Just a very few British people benefitted from the nefarious trade in human misery. Later those same people, to protect the loot they stole from the Empire, built a wall the full length of the docks, seperating us from our river.

While millions of humans were being impressed into bondage, millions in Europe, including children, we being exploited by being used to depress the wages, meagre as they were, of thier fathers and mothers by being employed down mines, up chimneys, in mills and those were hailed as the lucky ones. The unlucky ones were left to beg on the streets of European cities while surrounded by ostentatious wealth and abundance.

[Waterways]

If "OUR" ancestors were the priviledged class and thier agents, which mine were not. Just a very few British people benefitted from the nefarious trade in human misery. Later those same people, to protect the loot they stole from the Empire, built a wall the full length of the docks, seperating us from our river.

While millions of humans were being impressed into bondage, millions in Europe, including children, we being exploited by being used to depress the wages, meagre as they were, of thier fathers and mothers by being employed down mines, up chimneys, in mills and those were hailed as the lucky ones. The unlucky ones were left to beg on the streets of European cities while surrounded by ostentatious wealth and abundance.

Forced slavery and one by circumstances.

[Waterways]

**** hippies need to get over it.

We acknowledge it already and relised it happened but times goes on and it sucks to hold a grudge, especially since it was our ancestors not us!

Not one African nation has apologised for its role in the enslavement. The Liverpool ships transported them, the Africans rounded them up in the first place.