Finding What is Ours: Symposium
Date: Saturday 8th June, 2024
Venue: Rich Mix, 35-47 Bethnal Green Rd, London E1 6LA
Time: 11:30am to 6:00pm
(Lunch 2:30pm)
TO REGISTER YOUR INTEREST PLEASE SIGN UP BELOW
As part of our Sloane Lab project, we will be hosting a symposium Saturday 8th June 2024, to examine the legacies and impact of the Hans Sloane collections and other similar collections on society and on African and African-Caribbean communities in Britain in particular. This follows our 1-day community workshop on 26th March. This will be a deep dive into the subject.
A main theme will restoring African practices that benefit our communities.
The symposium will feature experts in history, people who work with cultural and medicinal products and connect participants to these archives.
Originally from Ireland, Hans Sloane wrote his famous treatises Voyage to Jamaica, A Voyage to the Islands Madera, Barbados, Nieves, Saint Christophers and Jamaica (1707–1725) after travelling to the Caribbean to work as a doctor on plantations of enslaved Africans. During his time abroad, he assembled a collection of 800 plant specimens, as well as animals and items he believed to be of interest and further study. Working with Africans trafficekd from the continent and indigenous Caribs, Sloane had access to rich knowledge of healing, agriculture and other technologies, which we can explore and help us re-write and re-gain our own histories and knowledge.
How have collections been attained or stolen by colonialist “explorers” and “collectors” like Hans Sloane?
What is the cultural significance of the items in these collections to communities they come from?
Why were these collections the foundations of the British Museum, University College London and other British heritage and academic institutions?
How do archives and museums continue to perpetuate colonial mindsets and problematic language about items and the communities their collections come from?
How do these impact how history is written and collected about us?
The Sloane Lab is one of five ‘Discovery Projects’ of Towards a National Collection, funded by the Arts and Humanities Research Council (AHRC).
#Action Not a Bag a Mouth
2nd Draft
How are housed and treated in Britain have inherited the colonial mindsets, often removing the centrality of the communities they were taken from in Africa and the Caribbean, and displayed for European interest, imaginations and study. We will be challenging how these are held, as a process of archiving, and their relationship with members of the public, especially those whose nations these come from...
The first half of the project involved a workshop and lunch with UCL where community participants used digital technologies used by archivists for digital archives, to explore how the collection can become more accessible to us as African-heritage communities.
Spaces are very limited so sign up below ASAP.