Our Free Trip to Liverpool International Slavery Museum for Speaking Without Voice

On July 20th twenty nine excited members of the community travelled up to Liverpool, to see the Igbo Compound within the International Slavery Museum. The recreated family compound is decorated with Uli designs, commissioned from local artists!

The visit began with an introductory talk from Chief Angus Chukuemeka - an Igbo community leader in Liverpool - and Zachary Kingdon - curator of the African Collections Ethnology at Liverpool's World Museum. Both men had been involved in the design of the compound and gave lively and engaging insight into the heritage.

Next many of the group took part in a creative cosmogram workshop with artist Michelle Peterkin Walker, which explored African ancestral symbolism, as it existed in the gardens of enslaved Africans. Attendees had some beautiful creations to take home with them!

We then looked around the rest of the museum: a harrowing but vital reminder of the horrors of the Atlantic slave trade and its widespread legacies in today's world.

All in all, it was an informative and exciting day. We all learned new things and made some new friends on the long journey there and back!