Please note that this event will take place at the Rendall Building, University of Liverpool, L69 7WW
The redevelopment of International Slavery Museum, as part of the Waterfront Transformation Project, saw International Slavery Museum’s curatorial team expand to eight members. This has brought together a variety of expertise, perspectives and relationships to racial slavery, its history and its legacies.
Together we have been grappling with many questions: what does slavery mean to us? Who should be a curator of slavery? Who are our audiences? What are the ‘things’ of racial slavery that we might display and what stories can they tell? How do we represent themes of violence and race that have shaped this history, but also continue to shape present realities? How do we fulfil our responsibilities as curators to care for objects, when those objects were created to do violence and dehumanise enslaved people and their descendants?
Join us, either online or in-person, for a roundtable discussion between International Slavery Museum curators Miles Greenwood, Makiya Davis-Bramble, Alexander Scott, Adiva Lawrence and Josh Jones, guest participant Jean-François Manicom, and you, the audience, as we collectively respond to our first call: how do we curate slavery?
Note for online registrations: The link to join this workshop online will be sent via email the week of the event so please ensure your enter your email correctly without any typos.
Guest – Jean-François Manicom
Jean-François Manicom is the Senior Curator of the Museum of London Docklands (London – UK). Prior to this role he was the Lead Curator of the International Slavery Museum of Liverpool.
Before coming in UK he worked as curator of the permanent collection of the Memorial ACTe (Guadeloupe – French West Indies), which is the first memorial site dedicated to the history of slavery and to the expression of contemporary Caribbean Art in the Caribbean region.
With an expertise on photography, photographic archives and contemporary visual art, Jean-François has curated multiple exhibitions since 1998 that focused on the visual archives of slavery and its legacies in contemporary post-plantation societies, in France, in the Caribbean and in the UK. He is an internationally prized photographer and film director, whose work questions the universal enigmas of our nowadays, in a world where multiple and fragmented pasts challenge our power to imagine new possible futures.
The series will be organised around key questions – “calls” – that underpin the curation of International Slavery Museum. Attendees will engage with the history and legacies of racial slavery as it relates to the Call of the event, and they will be invited to “respond” in a variety of ways should they wish to.
This workshop is part of International Slavery Museum’s public programme.
Upcoming events (tickets available soon):
How do we represent the violence of maritime history? | Saturday 24th January 2026, 11am – 3pm
How do we remember slavery through movement? | Thursday 23rd April 2026, 5pm – 8pm
How has slavery harmed the climate? | Thursday 9th July 2026, times TBC