The Judges’ Lodgings Museum and the Priory Church in Lancaster are looking for four to six artists to work on a proposed new project about the Transatlantic Slave Trade. The project aims to reflect, reveal, and redress omissions in our collective memory of the role Lancaster played in the transatlantic slave trade and of the enslaved people who came through, or stayed in the city.
The slave trade made a number of Lancastrians very wealthy, and their family names are reflected in the city’s buildings, collections, institutions, streets and in the Priory churchyard itself, whilst the names and the stories of those enslaved remain largely unknown. We want artists to help bring our communities face to face with this part of our past, revealing the agency and actions of Black individuals in the past.
This Expression of Interest is for the first phase of the project for artists to deliver high-quality art workshops with school children and local people. It is hoped a later phase of the project will result in the commissioning of a new memorial artwork within the Priory Churchyard and significant new portraits of enslaved Africans in Lancaster.