The International Slavery Museum's video and transcript
Dr Richard Benjamin, Director of International Slavery Museum: A lot of people come to a museum and just expect to see objects. That’s what you get in other museums. Of course you get that here – we have fantastic collections here. But we are a campaigning museum and we have a message. So it’s important to us that people come to the museum and have an interesting day, but when they leave they want to get involved, and not many museums do that, and that’s what makes us stand out.
Vicky Evans-Hubbard, Demonstrator: It’s really rewarding actually when you get a group of students who come in and at first appear to be not engaged, but at the end they will come up to you and say, “Oh, that was really good Miss. That really changed the way I thought”, or, “I’m going to look that up when I get home, Miss”. Then you really know that you’ve touched something in them or sparked an interest. And that’s all you can really hope to do – send people out of the museum wanting to know more.
Visitor 1: It bombards you with so much stuff that you can’t miss the message, because even if you don’t see half of it – and I don’t expect you will – you see so much that it overwhelms you.
Visitor 2: I think it can help the young people because if they understand where they come from, and find out what went on, then maybe they’ll think about what they’re doing and take life more seriously.
Visitor 3: I think everyone should come and see it, yes. It’s very important to know why Britain has such a diverse culture really, and where everyone came from so, yes.
Dr Richard Benjamin: If you genuinely believe that a museum as an institution should be somewhere where you do more than look at objects then go home; and if you believe that there is more to it than that then vote for the International Slavery Museum, because we genuinely want to engage contemporary issues. It’s not just about the past; it is very much about the present. To continue doing that we need support, so I would say to people vote for the International Slavery Museum because we really are a contemporary modern museum that’s not scared to look at dangerous and very difficult issues.