Museum pop-up conversations

We at the University of Cambridge Museums are eager to have a conversation with you about our ongoing work exploring the legacies of empire and enslavement in our collections. There will be a landmark exhibition at the Fitzwilliam Museum called Black Atlantic: Power, People, Resistance that explores the links between Cambridgeshire and Atlantic slavery. The exhibition tells both a Cambridgeshire story, and a global one, and contains some compelling and complex stories relevant to communities across Cambridgeshire.

This is where you come in. Through a series of pop-up conversations events in our lovely county libraries across Cambridgeshire we would like to share these stories with local communities. We will also be bringing our very own Collections Campaigns Chest, which has a selection of amazing handling objects inspired by our collections. The chest is inspired by Thomas Clarkson's Campaign Chest used to campaign for the abolition of slavery, which sits at Wisbech & Fenland Museum.

The Collections Campaigns Chest is a handling box created by colleagues in learning and engagement, inspired by Thomas Clarkson's Abolition of Slavery Chest at Wisbech & Fenland Museum. The Chest includes fascinating replicas of objects and stories from our museum collections that speak about complex histories: we’ve got a range of objects from animal figurines to a phrenological head.

Visit us and join the conversation. Throughout June and July, we will be popping up at libraries in Wisbech, Ely, Soham, Huntingdon and Cambridge- Barnwell, Milton Road and Central Library. 

Dates and places to find us:

Thursday 1 June Wisbech Library 10am-3pm

Thursday 8 June Ely Library 10am-3pm

Saturday 17 June Milton Road Library 10am-3pm

Saturday 1 July Soham Library 10am-1pm

Friday 7 July Cambridge Central Library 10am-3pm

Friday 14 July Barnwell Road Library 2-5pm

Saturday 29 July Huntingdon Library 10am-3pm