The Listening Salon at The Black Atlantic: Power, People, Resistance

The Listening Salon is a place to have inclusive communal discussions. We are using them to think around the themes of Black Atlantic: Power, People, Resistance exhibition, hosted by the Fitzwilliam Museum.

The five sessions are facilitated by me, with guest speakers who are intended to provide a scaffolding for the conversation, but not to be the only voices in the room. The aim of the Salon is to mirror the main aims of the exhibition – to provide a wider context to our understanding of British history by rectifying the elision of the Black Atlantic as a significant contributor to modern Britain – and to offer a space for dialogue, reflection and communal interrogation of our responses to the exhibition.

This will provide the opportunity for the community to listen and be heard on their experience of the exhibition and to digest together what the exhibition means for us as a collective. We will address questions from national identity, to how institutions can manage their histories, all the way to conversations about restorative justice. It is intended to be an exercise in working as a community to think through complex and sometimes emotional issues.