Wilberforce House Museum - Museums Association
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Wilberforce House Museum

Changing perspectives with community engagement in Hull

Since 2021, the Wilberforce House Museum, in partnership with the Wilberforce Institute at the University of Hull, developed a creative approach to deliver a new community engagement strategy that engaged underrepresented communities in temporary and permanent exhibitions development.

The museum collaborated with people from Africa, or those of African-American, Caribbean or African descent, to embed decolonisation into its working practice.

In 2022-23, work included:

  • Abolitions and Activists – Black voices brought into abolition galleries through short films.
  • Homelands – a co-produced exhibition exploring Sierra Leone’s rich culture and heritage through wartime photography. African members of the Hull Afro-Caribbean Association reinterpreted a wartime collection of images to reveal the vibrancy of everyday life in 1940s Sierra Leone.
  • Wilberforce House Slave Trade Legacy Gallery – eleven people of colour, including PhD students, community historians, activists and local residents, came together to re-display this permanent gallery, challenging the legacy of racism created by slavery. Co-produced with curators, academics and designers, they created the gallery they wanted.
  • Why We Matter – young people of colour from the Warren Youth Project explored their identity through a co-produced exhibition.
  • Taking the Knee – an exhibition exploring this ancient mode of protest and asking why it matters to Black people today.

The development of inclusive exhibitions created spaces where people of colour felt heard and could explore difficult issues. Strong bonds of mutual respect have been forged through co-creation, and the participants are now acting as a permanent advisory board to guide the work of the museum and partners.

The group is integrated into the museum’s work, being invited to join other projects as volunteers and paid advisors, and they have been upskilled so they can produce their own exhibitions. For example, participant Siddi has established a business taking Black heritage into schools, and Glynis has become a paid consultant connecting with African artists in London and Berlin.

The museum has also developed an ongoing collaboration with the Black Heritage Collective Hull, who participated in the exhibitions and trained museum staff in anti-racism.

The Homelands exhibition (8,588 visitors), produced for Black History Month 2022, toured eight hard-to-reach schools. Seen by the deputy minister of tourism for Sierra Leone, he arranged for it to tour the country from November 2023, and Siddi is opening a community venue in Sierra Leone to share the work of the advisory board.

The exhibition won the University of Hull Knowledge Exchange Partnership Award and the PraxisAuril Knowledge Exchange Award, a national university award. Meanwhile, work with the Warren Youth Project comprises part of an exciting new partnership.

In November 2023, Changing Perspectives in Hull won the Decolonising Museums Award at the Museums Change Lives Awards 2023.

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