Culture Minister David Lammy today announced a £500,000 capital grant for the new International Slavery Museum in Liverpool being developed by National Museums Liverpool.
This funding builds on the £250,000 annual revenue funding which the DCMS has already pledged.
The International Slavery Museum (ISM) will replace the groundbreaking Transatlantic Slavery Gallery in the Merseyside Maritime Museum. The Museum will play a key role in this year’s commemoration of the bicentenary of the abolition of the slave trade in the British Empire. The ISM is being developed in two stages, the first of which is due to open on 23 August 2007, the UNESCO International Slavery day.
David Lammy said:
“It is right that we help National Museums Liverpool develop the new International Slavery Museum. It will provide a legacy to last way beyond this year’s bicentenary. This year provides the perfect opportunity for the ISM to take its stories to a new generation of visitors to the museum in this fantastic city. And I hope people will be encouraged to remember those who suffered as a result of the slave trade, and to celebrate the efforts of all those who struggled for its abolition. I look forward to the opening on the 23 August.”
David Fleming, Director of National Museums Liverpool, said:
“The opening of the International Slavery Museum will be the pinnacle of Britain’s bicentenary year. This will be a magnificent new national institution and a worthy legacy of 2007 not just for Liverpool but for the nation. We are immensely grateful to Government, and to the Department for Culture, Media and Sport, for their farsightedness in backing this project so generously. The museum will make a major contribution to global debates about human rights.”
Liverpool was once Europe’s capital of the transatlantic slave trade in the late 18th Century and grew rich on the profits of trading in enslaved people. It is therefore fitting that this subject should be marked and explored in the city.
The Department for Communities and Local Government is responsible for the Government's plans to mark the Bicentenary, which will focus on two dates: 25 March (the anniversary of the signing of the Abolition of the Slave Trade Act) and 23 August (UNESCO day for the remembrance of slavery and its abolition).
A calendar, published on Monday by the Prime Minister, highlights events taking place across England and Wales. National and local museums, galleries, and other arts and cultural venues together with faith groups and grassroots organisations will host a series of events and exhibitions to mark the Bicentenary. Local and central government will be playing their part too.
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Notes for Editors
1. The museum galleries will feature new dynamic and thought-provoking displays about the story of the transatlantic slave trade. Crucially, it will include new displays about the legacy of transatlantic slavery and will address issues such as freedom, identity, human rights, reparation claims, racial discrimination and cultural change.
2. For more information on the bicentenary and the events taking place, please visit the Government Direct website
3. Liverpool Culture Company, the organisation charged with delivering the city's Capital of Culture celebrations in 2008, has confirmed that the bicentenary will be one of the themes shaping its artistic programme for 2007. The Culture Company is set to reveal further details of the full programme in mid-October.
4. National Museums Liverpool is the only group of national museums in England based entirely outside London. NML is active locally, regionally, nationally and internationally, reflecting the organisation’s unique status as a national institution based in a major regional city. The group includes art galleries holding world famous collections - the Walker Art Gallery, the Lady Lever Art Gallery and Sudley House. In addition, we look after three museums - World Museum Liverpool, Merseyside Maritime Museum and HM Customs & Excise National Museum plus a venue that houses our conservation department, the National Conservation Centre.
5. The project was awarded £1.65 million by the Heritage Lottery Fund in September 2006.
6. The ISM is being developed in two stages, the first of which is due to open on 23 August 2007, the UNESCO International Slavery day. The day commemorates an uprising of the enslaved Africans on the island of St Domingo (modern Haiti and the Dominican Republic) in 1791 and is a reminder that enslaved Africans were the main agents of their own liberation.
