WE HAVE LOST A WORLD...

Enslavement, and the (neo)colonial takeover of Africa mean that collectively, we have lost a world. We know this in our own beings, but evidence exists in museums and archives across the globe.

Decolonising the Archive (DTA) have been invited to make an intervention into the ‘Sloane Lab’ project. By connecting the data about collections held at the British Museum, British Library, Natural History Museum and more, the project means that for the first time, digital searches connecting the objects, people and places that formed Sir Hans Sloane’s collections will be possible.

Why is this important?

Sloane financed his collecting, in part, through the enslavement and trafficking of African people. He made use of the knowledge of enslaved people, but they are systematically silenced in his catalogues and publications.

We have been asked to host a workshop using the beta-version of the Sloane Lab digital portal. The project team want to better understand what kinds of questions we want to ask this digital knowledge base so the platform can be made more accessible to us.

Being 100% transparent, we have our concerns about working on this given the historical and present day abuses our people suffer at the hands of these institutions. However, we can also see the potential of the project to support independent, community-led research into collections that are connected to our communities, but have until now been hidden from view.

We will be hosting a workshop on Tuesday 26th March in Brixton which will ask questions about our experience of using the portal to search for things we are interested in. We will also look at the warnings used on the site around inappropriate language. The last session of the day will give participants the opportunity to contribute to an upcoming symposium exploring the issues around the Sloane Lab collections relating to African and African-Caribbean communities.

Participants will be paid a fee (£200) for attending this workshop and lunch will be provided.

If you are interested in attending the workshop, please register here.

The Sloane Lab is one of five ‘Discovery Projects’ of Towards a National Collection, funded by the Arts and Humanities Research Council (AHRC).