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Dismantling the Master’s Museum 2-5pm Friday 10 June Learn more about—and TAKE ACTION AGAINST—Bristol’s celebration of enslavement and Bristol’s whitewashing of history! Bristol, in both its public art and museums, still celebrates the legacy of eurocentric enslavement of African persons. This ugly celebration runs alongside Bristol’s gross social and economic oppression of its communities of African descent—alongside poor representations of, and poor engagement with, African history, African heritage, and African people, in Bristol’s public museums and galleries, in Bristol’s public squares and streets. These public spaces are owned by us—citizens who contribute to society in various ways, including by paying taxes. These public spaces are funded in our name, to serve our communities and our children. Yet, for those of us racialised as black, museums and public art seemingly work against, rather than for us. Artefacts stolen during colonial massacres populate museum archives; we are represented as primitive and ‘history-less’, and the violent reality of Bristol’s favourite son, Edward Colston, is whitewashed, sanitised, and presented as positive and benevolent. How can we transform our civic spaces and institutions, so that they are sources of empowerment for our communities? Dismantling the Master’s Museum is a new national project—with links to transnational networks—seeking to address this question. Building on the deep decolonising foundation laid by our African ancestors and by current on-going campaigns, we aim to empower communities of African descent, so that our communities take the lead in dismantling these on-going colonial legacies. This interactive workshop will include short film screenings, collective debate, and a sharing of resources and action-based toolkits. If you would like to learn more about repairing how we are portrayed in our public spaces, and if you’d like to take collective action to repair how we are portrayed in our public spaces, then please join us, on Friday 10th June, between 2 and 5pm, in Bristol’s Trinity Centre. The session is open to all, but we explicitly and unapologetically extend a special invitation to Bristol’s communities of African descent and to people who do not usually engage with museums. This is your opportunity to make your voice heard, listened to, and put into action. The session will be led by Dr Nathaniel Adam Tobias Coleman a scholar-activist from Birmingham, where he works closely with the Black Studies Research Cluster at Birmingham City University’s Centre for Critical Social Research, and Isabelle Cox, a scholar-activist and mother from Manchester, who is passionate about children, young people, and Black liberation. https://emergencies-bristol.tumblr.com/post/143932211850/dismantling-the-masters-museum-dr-nathaniel