About the International Slavery Museum
The Fight for Freedom and Equality wall in the Legacy gallery. Photograph © Redman Design/International Slavery Museum.
This £9.5million ($17million) International Slavery Museum project has two main elements:
Our new display galleries on the third floor of the existing Merseyside Maritime Museum concentrate on the history of transatlantic slavery, its many legacies, and the wider issue of freedom. They explore the story of transatlantic slavery from the complex and vital cultures of West Africa before the coming of the Europeans, through the horrific middle passage onboard ship, to life in the Americas. The galleries demonstrate the determined and relentless resistance to enslavement, and how enslaved people themselves contributed to gaining their eventual freedom.
Key messages that are communicated in the new displays are that transatlantic slavery:
The galleries highlight contemporary concerns such as human rights, reparation claims, under-development in Africa and the Caribbean, and racial discrimination - examining key questions, such as what it means to be British and Black, and racial stereotyping. Displays explore how people of African descent have made major contributions to the cultural transformation in the Americas and in Europe.
Phase two will see the development of the Centre for the Study of International Slavery (CSIS), a collaboration with the department of history at the University of Liverpool, as well as exhibition space, a public archive, learning suite, and a community zone. It will be opened in 2011 in what is now the Dock Traffic Office, a building adjacent to the museum galleries in the Merseyside Maritime Museum. The buildings will be joined by an enclosed glass walkway.
Not only will the Centre offer facilities for those interested in both historical and contemporary aspects of slavery but it aims to contribute to greater understanding and informed debate about slavery and its many legacies. It will promote an international, comparative and interdisciplinary approach to examine the cultural and social effects of the transatlantic slave trade, slavery and resistance on all societies involved.
The International Slavery Museum will continue to address the history and all legacies of the transatlantic slave trade including racism, the struggle for civil rights, ongoing inequalities, injustices and exploitation arising out of the slave trade.
This will continue to be the main focus of the International Slavery Museum’s work but it will also operate in the field of human rights, particularly issues which have synergy with those addressed in the museum's current galleries. So where, on a community, gender, national or religious level, people are denied respect, freedom and equality, and where people’s basic human rights are abused, these scenarios are part of the International Slavery Museum's broader remit.