Black History Debate 2010
‘Are Black people excluded from the historical buildings of the
places where they live?’
The debate took place on Saturday 16th October in Brighton Museum Art Gallery.
It was lively and engaging with a very mixed audience in terms of cultural
background, interest and age.
Our speakers were:
Kofi Mawuli Klu - a Community Advocate and Educationist living in London. He
manages UEquipose, his own advocacy and educational services agency and is also
serving as the Chief Executive Commissioner of PANAFRIINDABA, a Pan-Afrikan
grassroots community-based Think Tank. He is also a Visiting Research Fellow in the
School of Geography, in the Faculty of Environment of the University of Leeds.
Kofi's focus in the debate was on highlighting the development of Better Practice in
tackling Institutional Racism, which he sees as one of the most important causes of
the problems of Exclusion and tokenist pseudo-inclusion with regard to the topic.
Daniel Ibekwe - Former Chair Person Brighton & Hove Racial Harassment Forum;
Former Chairperson Sussex Police Independent Advisory Group; Vice Chair Ethnic
Minorities Representative Council; Former Chair MOSAIC Mixed Parentage Group;
Current advocate Brighton & Hove Race Project
His focus was the accessibility of Historical buildings such as civic centres to Black
people / residents taking the topically important periods of 1960 - 2000 and 2000 2009.
and Louise Purbrick - Principal Lecturer in the History of Art and Design at the
University of Brighton and recently appointed Visiting Scholar at the Transitional
Justice Institute, University of Ulster to research "Museums and Exercise of Human
Rights". She has worked with Belfast-based conflict resolution project, Healing
Through Remembering, on the creation of a museum of the conflict in Northern
Ireland since 2005. She is also a local activist and curated, Rattling the Cage: A
community archive of documents, textiles, photography and film used in the 'Save
Omar' campaign, exhibited at Phoenix, March 2009.
Her contribution focussed on the wider historical context of current debates about
inclusion and exclusion in contemporary museums and the possibility of addressing
Britain's colonial legacy in museums and other places of historic interest.
The main points from Questions and Answers included:



The focus of the discussion was on Museums
Who selects what is remembered in Museums and is that representative of
the local BME community?
As a result there are objects in the vaults of the Museum that are not chosen
to be displayed








Can BME people work towards feeling a shared ownership of the artefacts
and objects at Museums and how can this be done?
Discussion on the repatriation of objects – if they are, they will be back in the
UK via the black market and no longer owned by the general public
Challenging Museum structures and the way they work in the community
From 2004 authorities by law need to know who is accessing services
How to foster a new approach to these issues without it being solely a legal
obligation
The layout of exhibitions in the Museum creates particular spaces for
artefacts relating to Empire, as a result they become marginal
The Museum expressed a commitment to these issues, there is an ongoing
dialogue that needs to happen
It is not about it being Black history or European history but it is in fact the
Black role in the making of world history and should be recognised as such
The discussion was a passionate one, which reflected the importance of these issues
within the BME community and for scholars and activists engaged with these
questions. It opened up extremely fruitful areas of both dissention and agreement
about who owns and controls ‘our’ heritage and how the issues raised impact upon
wider questions of inclusion and exclusion in contemporary Britain. We hope to
follow up on the debate in future events.
By Cathy Bergin and Beth Harrison