Museumand: The National Caribbean Heritage Museum is a group that celebrates the contribution of British African-Caribbean people to life in the United Kingdom. The group is a "museum without walls" based in Nottingham, and who work with communities there and elsewhere, including mounting exhibitions in museums, universities and other places. [1] It was founded in 2015 by Catherine Ross as the SKN (Skills Knowledge and Networks) cultural museum, [2] and Museumand is a subsidiary of the SKN Heritage Museum Community interest company. [3]
In 2016, Museumand was invited to be part of the University of Oxford's Oxford and Colonialism Working Group. [4] In July 2016, as SKN Heritage Museum, they launched an exhibition 52 Genres and Counting at the Splendour in Nottingham festival. The exhibition celebrated Black British music since 1947, and toured to the Bass Festival in Birmingham and Soul Fest in Liverpool. [5] [6]
In 2017 and 2018, Museumand collaborated in the University of Leicester Centre for New Writing's "Caribbean Journeys" project, resulting in a book Caribbean Journeys (2018, ISBN 9781527219212), an anthology of the writings of Caribbean elders recording their life experiences. [7] [8]
In 2017, Museumand hosted Caribbean Conversations, a series of 8 programmes on local television station Notts TV. [9]
In 2018, the National Trust Museum of Childhood at Sudbury Hall, Derbyshire, hosted an exhibition of "Black Dolls: The Power of Representation" in conjunction with Museumand. [10]
In 2019, Museumand's film White Gold; the story of sugar, slavery and settlement in the Caribbean was published in Feast online magazine, in issue #1 on the theme of sugar. [11]
In 2021, Museumand partnered with the University of Lincoln's "Reimagining Lincolnshire" project to produce a four-day event in Lincoln including a performance "Hidden Stories: From the Caribbean to Great Britain". [12]
70 Objeks & Tings is an exhibition and book which tell the story of the "Windrush generation" through their familiar objects and other aspects of their daily lives. [13] [14] The book Objeks & Tings was launched on Windrush Day in 2020, with online publication of its first section, on food, although COVID-19 had prevented the planned programme of workshops to gather and develop material for the book. [13] The exhibition was on display at the Streetlife Museum in Hull in 2021 during Black History Month, [15] and at Nottingham Castle when it reopened in 2023, and the book of the same title was available for sale there. [16] [17] [18] Twelve episodes of an associated podcast Objeks & Tings were produced in June-September 2023 and were chosen by The Guardian as one of its "podcasts of the week". [19] [20]
Museumand's exhibition Pardner Hand: A Caribbean answer to British banking exclusion was displayed at the Bank of England Museum, London in 2023 and 2024, opening on Windrush Day in June 2023, [21] [18] and the museum published a series of blogs by Museumand's founders to accompany the exhibition. [22]
The group's founder, Catherine Ross, who came to the UK in 1958 from Saint Kitts at the age of seven, is its director [1] [23] and her daughter Lynda-Louise Burrell is its creative director. [24]
British African-Caribbean people or British Afro-Caribbean people are an ethnic group in the United Kingdom. They are British citizens whose recent ancestors originate from the Caribbean, and further trace much of their ancestry to West and Central Africa or they are nationals of the Caribbean who reside in the UK. There are some self-identified Afro-Caribbean people who are multi-racial. The most common and traditional use of the term African-Caribbean community is in reference to groups of residents continuing aspects of Caribbean culture, customs and traditions in the UK.
Ronald "Charlie" Phillips, also known by the nickname "Smokey", is a Jamaican-born restaurateur, photographer, and documenter of black London. He is now best known for his photographs of Notting Hill during the period of West Indian migration to London; however, his subject matter has also included film stars and student protests, with his photographs having appeared in Stern, Harper’s Bazaar, Life and Vogue and in Italian and Swiss journals. Notable recent shows by Phillips include How Great Thou Art, "a sensitive photographic documentary of the social and emotional traditions that surround death in London's African Caribbean community".
Katherine Ross and variants may refer to:
Vanley Burke is a British Jamaican photographer and artist. His photographs capture experiences of his community's arrival in Britain, the different landscapes and cultures he encountered, the different ways of survival and experiences of the wider African-Caribbean community.
Hurvin Anderson is a British painter.
Veronica Maudlyn Ryan is a Montserrat-born British sculptor. She moved to London with her parents when she was an infant and now lives between New York and Bristol. In December 2022, Ryan won the Turner Prize for her 'really poetic' work.
Black Cultural Archives (BCA) is an archive and heritage centre in Brixton, London, devoted to the histories of people of African and Caribbean descent in Britain. Also known as BCA, it was founded in 1981, by educationalist and historian Len Garrison and others. BCA's mission is to record, preserve and celebrate the history of people of African descent in Britain. The BCA's new building in Brixton, opened in 2014, enables access to the archive collection, provides dedicated learning spaces and mounts a programme of exhibitions and events.
Althea McNishCM FSCD was an artist from Trinidad who became the first Black British textile designer to earn an international reputation.
Sam Beaver King MBE was a Jamaican-British campaigner and community activist. He first came to England as an engineer in the Royal Air Force (RAF) during the Second World War but returned to Jamaica in 1947. Failing to settle there, King took passage to London in 1948, sailing on the Empire Windrush. He later became the first black mayor of Southwark and a campaigner in support of West Indian immigrants to the country.
Nubian Jak Community Trust (NJCT) is a commemorative plaque and sculpture scheme founded by Jak Beula that highlights the historic contributions of Black and minority ethnic people in Britain. The first NJCT heritage plaque, honouring Bob Marley, was unveiled in 2006 after "two years of research and behind the scenes negotiating". The scheme has been run and managed by the not-for-profit organization Nubian Jak Trust Ltd since August 2016, with a remit to commemorate and celebrate the diverse history of modern Britain. Its objectives include the promotion of social equality and to encourage activities that promote cultural diversity in society.
Barbara Walker is a British artist who lives and works in Birmingham. The art historian Eddie Chambers calls her "one of the most talented, productive and committed artists of her generation". She is known for colossal figurative drawings and paintings, often drawn directly onto the walls of the gallery, that frequently explore themes of documentation and recording, and erasure. Walker describes her work as social reflective practice intended to address misunderstandings and stereotypes about the African-Caribbean community in Britain.
Patrick Philip Vernon is a British social commentator and political activist of Jamaican heritage, who works in the voluntary and public sector. He is a former Labour councillor in the London Borough of Hackney. His career has been involved with developing and managing health and social care services, including mental health, public health, regeneration and employment projects. Also a film maker and amateur cultural historian, he runs his own social enterprise promoting the history of diverse communities, as founder of Every Generation and the "100 Great Black Britons" campaign. He is also an expert on African and Caribbean genealogy in the UK. He was appointed a Clore Fellow in 2007, an Officer of the Order of the British Empire (OBE) in the 2012 Birthday Honours for "services to the Reduction of Health Inequalities for Ethnic Minorities", and in 2018 was awarded an honorary doctorate from the University of Wolverhampton.
Neil Emile Elias Kenlock is a Jamaican-born photographer and media professional who has lived in London since the 1960s. During the 1960s and 1970s, Kenlock was the official photographer of the British Black Panthers, and he has been described as being "at the forefront of documenting the black experience in the UK". Kenlock was the co-founder of Choice FM, the first successful radio station granted a licence to cater for the black community in Britain.
Arthur Torrington CBE is a Guyanese-born community advocate and historian who is Director and co-founder of the London-based Windrush Foundation, a charity that since 1996 has been working to highlight the contributions to the UK of African and Caribbean peoples, "to keep alive the memories of the young men and women who were among the first wave of post-war settlers in Britain", and to promote good community relations. The organization commemorates in its name the Empire Windrush, the ship that on 22 June 1948 docked at Tilbury bringing the first significant group of Caribbean migrants to Britain, including Sam King, who with Torrington established the Windrush Foundation.
Catherine Ross is a British educator and museum director. Originally from Saint Kitts, Ross founded Museumand, a "museum without walls" celebrating British African-Caribbean people's contributions to the United Kingdom, in 2015.
Samuel Ross is a British fashion designer, creative director, and artist. He is known for founding the fashion label A-COLD-WALL*, Industrial Design studio SR_A SR_A, and the Black British Artists Grants Programme. Since founding these organisations, Ross has collaborated with companies such as Apple, LVMH, Nike. Ross's output is often characterised as "social architecture for the body", captured through abstraction, brutalism, and deconstruction.
Norma Jacqueline Gregory is a British author, historian, archivist, broadcaster and diverse heritage specialist of Jamaican descent. In 2013, she founded the Nottingham News Centre focused on the preservation of heritage. She is a museum project consultant encouraging increased diversity of representation in British museums and the founder director of the Black Miners Museum.
Alford Dalrymple Gardner was a Jamaican-born "Windrush generation" emigrant and co-founder of the first Caribbean cricket club in Britain.
Museumand, The National Caribbean Heritage Museum a subsidiary of The SKN Heritage Museum CIC