MPs and invited dignitaries gathered to hear the results of a year’s outreach and education project led by writer Rommi Smith and instigated by Parliament to accompany the exhibition, The British Slave Trade, Abolition, Parliament, and People. A complementary website, Parliament and the British Slave Trade 1600 – 1807, was created by the Parliamentary Archives.
Rommi was appointed as writer in residence for the project and worked with the children of Burntwood Secondary School in South London to help them develop poems and other prose relating to slavery and its abolition.
Via a series of workshops the students produced thoughtful poems and prose inspired by the slave trade, which have been published on the Parliamentary Archives website.
“Rommi's taken on the full panoply of our students, really challenged them, made them think,” said Acting Principal of Burntwood School, Cath Brookes. “It's made them raise their expectations of themselves, I'm really, really proud of them.”
Contributions by the youngsters ranged from poems reflecting on what freedom means to open letters addressed to Gordon Brown tackling issues of contemporary slavery.
“It was obvious that the workshop allowed the children to dig deep, to think about the history and to personalise it - that's very important to me,” said Monica Morris-Jarra, the parent of a girl in year 9 at Burntwood who took part in project.
“So often education can be alienating for children of so-called 'other cultures'. I was very encouraged and pleased the school took this project on because of its relevance to us, I'm from the Caribbean, her father is from West Africa.... what it said to the children is that you have a place in this school, in this world - it's validating.”
To mark the bicentenary the Parliamentary Archives has digitised a wealth of archival material to provide evidence of the issues, processes and people at the heart of Parliament's relationship with the slave trade.
You can read the results of the workshops in the Your Voice section of the Parliament and the British Slave Trade website. A Poetry and Education Teacher’s Pack will be published at the end of October 2007 and will also be available via the website.
