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Young carers from Tameside and Trafford worked with local artists to create a textile poem about the transatlantic slave trade
Manchester Art Gallery has worked with two groups of young carers from NCH the children’s charity, one group from Trafford, the other from Tameside. These young people visited the gallery and explored issues of injustice and freedom, inspired by discussions with an historian about the transatlantic slave trade. They then worked with poet Tony Curry to express their thoughts on slavery and with textiles artist Colette Gilmartin, they made beautiful, individual letters and turned their poem into a visual statement.
The result is a colourful textile banner that is now on display in the CIS Manchester Gallery.
Throughout the workshops the young people involved recorded their work in a sketchbook; this helped them to reflect on issues raised in discussions and to make links between historical facts and their own lives and feelings today.
One of the sketchbook activities asked the young people to design a badge of freedom, depicting what freedom means to them. Some of those badges are now on display in the Gallery of Craft and Design, as part of an intervention that invites other gallery visitors to design their own medal of freedom.
Project partners: V&A Museum, Birmingham Museums & Art Gallery; The Royal Pavilion, Libraries & Museums, Brighton & Hove; Manchester City Galleries; Tyne & Wear Museums and Sheffield Galleries & Museums Trust, NCH – the children’s charity
Funding: DCMS, DCF
Attitude: Remembering Slavery
Remembering Slavery Events
