Who decides what heritage looks like? Our communities do.
The Wilberforce Institute and Hull Museums are working with global majority communities to ensure they are at heart of developing inclusive collections and exhibitions
Project summary
The Challenge
Wilberforce House Museum had long focused on Western perspectives of the anti-slavery struggle, creating a need to decolonise narratives and include global majority voices.
The Approach
With Hull Museums, we established the Wilberforce House Museum Advisory Board to introduce community-led approaches to interpreting collections and programming exhibitions.
The Outcome
Hull Museums’ programme transformed, winning national awards and influencing heritage practice through exhibitions and activities foregrounding previously silenced narratives.
Institutes and centres
Lead academics
Project funded by
Project Partners
Sharing hidden stories
Over 100,000 people have engaged with exhibitions and activities programmed by the Wilberforce House Museum Advisory Board at sites in Hull and across Sierra Leone.
Image credit: Nanny Grignon Fafanto by Deanio X for 'To Heal a Butterfly'
The Challenge
Wilberforce House was the birthplace of anti-slavery campaigner, William Wilberforce, and is Hull’s oldest museum. Since 1906, Wilberforce House Museum has aimed to tell hidden stories from the struggle against slavery. However, the focus of the Museum’s permanent exhibitions for over a century has been on telling the struggle from Western perspectives.
Recognition of the importance of decolonising museum collections and exhibitions has been growing for decades. In 2020, the Black Lives Matter movement brought this into sharp focus, with increased discourse around systemic racism and colonial legacies. The University of Hull’s Wilberforce Institute was already working with Hull Museums, and both organisations were working closely with community groups. All felt a pressing need to introduce new perspectives for the Museum’s visitors.
William Wilberforce statue outside the Wilberforce House Museum
The Approach
In 2022, a new partnership developed to address the lack of global majority perspectives at Wilberforce House, the world’s oldest slavery museum.
The University of Hull and Hull Museums joined forces to try to remedy this injustice at the Wilberforce House Museum ... the museum remained shaped by generations of white curators and white academics. Change was desperately needed.Dr Nick Evans
Senior Lecturer in Diaspora History & Deputy Director of the Wilberforce Institute
To drive this transformation, a new Wilberforce House Museum Advisory Board (WHMAB) was established, comprising 11 global majority members with lived experience of racism and backgrounds in advancing racial equality. The WHMAB members were supported by Dr Nick Evans and Hull Museums Curator, Robin Diaper, but decision-making for content development and exhibition design was firmly centred on the ideas of the Board, to ensure that permanent galleries and temporary displays reflect previously silenced narratives.
Board meetings were held quarterly, providing guidance on decolonisation efforts across Wilberforce House Museum. Their work began with developing a touring exhibition that reframed Britain’s imperial ties with Sierra Leone but quickly led to work revising permanent panels at the Wilberforce House Museum. However, the partnership quickly expanded beyond traditional formats and has influenced work outside of traditional museum spaces.
This has included events marking Windrush Day, art trails centred on West African diasporic identity and new interactive displays showcasing black antislavery campaigners. The partnership has also provided advice to individual board members working on their own exhibitions, events and learning resources, across the city.
Wilberforce House Museum Advisory Board activities:
- Homelands – the Sierra Leone wartime photography exhibition launched at Hull’s Streetlife Museum during Black History Month 2022, before embarking on a tour of Sierra Leone museums, schools and community spaces. View our Homelands tour film.
- Black voices of antislavery interactive display at Wilberforce House Museum that opened in May 2023
- Reinterpretation of the permanent exhibition galleries at Wilberforce House Museum that opened in May 2023.
- Taking the Knee exhibition at the Streetlife Museum in September 2023 – exploring the historical and political significance of the gesture, co-created with racially marginalised communities to spark dialogue on activism, race, and social justice.
- Supporting a Hull Museums and Wilberforce Institute artist co-commission – artist DeanioX worked with the WHMAB and Wilberforce Institute academic, Dr Cassandra Gooptar, to create the “To Heal a Butterfly exhibition” at Wilberforce House Museum.
- The WHMAG have been empowered to programme further exhibitions and events including Echoes of Our Heritage exhibition, Sound of Our Skin festival, Black Mariners exhibition, Windrush Day, Slavery Remembrance Day, Stephen Lawrence service and Christopher Alder talk.
This has been an inspiring project to work on, we have really enjoyed researching influential musicians and performers to include in this exhibition and it is really special to celebrate our local artists who have been inspired by African music.Stella Munthali, WHMAB member and founder of The Black Heritage of Hull
Reflecting on the opening of the Echoes of our Heritage exhibition
Changing perspective – Bringing new narratives to Wilberforce House Museum
5 mins
The Impact
Wilberforce House Museum Advisory Board has already transformed Hull Museums’ exhibition programming, foregrounding the role of enslaved individuals in the struggle for emancipation. They have curated exhibitions and become a regular feature across numerous venues across the city. The Board continue to meet regularly, planning events and activities that reinterpret Hull Museums’ permanent collections and developing temporary exhibitions.
The partnership between the Wilberforce Institute, Hull Museums and members of Hull’s global majority communities was joint winner at the 2023 PraxisAuril KE Awards for Supporting Equality, Diversity and Inclusion through Knowledge Exchange. This follows a previous win secured by the team at the 2023 Museums Association ‘Museums Change Lives’ Awards earlier in November.
The Wilberforce House Museum Advisory Board was Highly Commended at the Museums and Heritage Awards 2024 and the team was also a finalist in the Times Higher Education Awards 2024 for Knowledge Exchange/Transfer Initiative of the Year.
Read this THE article from Dr Nick Evans on the Museums Partnership initiative.
Wilberforce House Museums Advisory Board members with Dr Nick Evans and Robin Diaper before the Museums Association award ceremony
The influence of the WHMAD extends beyond the city of Hull – Dr Nick Evans is a national advisor at The National Centre for Teaching Black History, delivered through the National Museums Liverpool Educators Steering Group (ESG) as part of the Waterfront Transformation Project. As part of his role, Nick welcomed members of the ESG to Hull, to meet with members of the Wilberforce House Museum Advisory Group and discuss their experiences of decolonising heritage.
We should know our history. I feel honoured to be part of telling that story for all the people who maybe can't tell the stories.Glynis Neslen
Artist and member of the Wilberforce House Museum Advisory Board