Child Cargo; Public engagement and learning from research into the Trans-Atlantic slave trade Abolitionists' campaign

Slavery is an issue of absorbing concern in today's society, as evidenced by the increasing number of news stories about trafficking and forced labour, many of them on our own doorsteps. It is estimated that there are 30 million slaves in the world today, a figure roughly equivalent to 50 per cent of the UK's population. Yet it is one thing to identify this problem, another to do something about it. The current project speaks to the need to create a modern anti-slavery movement and, as a first step, to educate our children about slavery, in both its historical and contemporary forms. To that end, the aim of the proposed engagement activity is to devise an educational package (songs, music, lesson plans, DVD) and a parallel music event for public performance, as a means of introducing school children and the wider public to the scale and complexity of slavery, as well as to the life experiences of those caught in its grip, past and present. The model here is 'Cargo', which was written and composed by Paul Field in 2007 with input from members of the Wilberforce Institute for the study of Slavery and Emancipation (WISE) at the University of Hull. The success of 'Cargo', which has been seen by over 70,000 people in the UK, France, Holland and the USA, demonstrates that quite complex ideas about slavery and abolition can be conveyed through music and drama.

The current proposal, 'Child Cargo', draws on the knowledge and expertise of the same creative artists, principally Paul Field, as well as the expertise of schoolteachers and researchers at WISE. As a first step, the project team will need to decide on content and choose appropriate themes and subject matter. This will necessarily involve a series of workshops involving all of the team members -- who will also seek the assistance of interested parties, including teachers and members of community groups (e.g. Hull Black History Partnership, Hull Freedom Festival). It is expected that most of the content consultation will be concentrated into this first phase of the project, which will take up to three months to complete. Thereafter, the emphasis will shift to the creative element of the project: writing songs, developing visuals, consultation with teachers, and, finally 'road testing' the end result at Hull's Freedom Festival in September 2015. By its very nature, this is a collaborative project, involving those working within and without higher education institutions. WISE already has established links with local schools in Hull and surrounding region. It also has close links with local community groups and with museums and archives, including the International Slavery Museum in Liverpool and the National Maritime Museum in London. We have already consulted widely with these groups and with the National Association of Schoolmasters and Union of Women Teachers (NASUWT), Anti-Slavery International and Stop The Traffik, who have become Project Partners to add their expertise and weight to the enterprise.

In developmental terms, we are able to draw on the expertise of digital media staff within the University of Hull (Scarborough) and across the University as a whole. The University of Hull is the lead institution in the AHRC Centre for Doctoral Training in Heritage. The management team will therefore have access to experts in museums and heritage interpretation, public engagement and the more than 70 international heritage organizations of the CDT. Similarly, members of WISE have links with Hull's Freedom Festival, which regularly attracts an audience of 80,000, and have been involved in the University's contribution to Hull City of Culture 2017. The project will therefore support the development of the comprehensive approach needed to raise awareness of modern slavery and to maximise impact from the completed research and this follow-on proposal.

The proposal meets the following pathways to impact: enhancing the knowledge economy, improving teaching and learning, improving social welfare and social cohesion, enhancing cultural enrichment and quality of life, and increasing public engagement with research and related societal issues. WISE already has an active outreach programme, working closely with a number of local schools on projects related to Black History Month and Holocaust Education. With Hull City Council the Institute is also actively involved in a project that sends local schoolteachers to Sierra Leone and that brings African teachers to Hull. As a result, WISE is ideally placed to maximise the impact of the proposal, certainly within Hull and surrounding region. At the same time, WISE has links with major international museums, including the National Maritime Museum, and has experience of developing educational packages aimed at schoochildren, the most recent example being the Contemporary Slavery Resource, which was developed in collaboration with the International Slavery Museum in Liverpool and the UNESCO International Slave Routes Project. WISE is also a successful conference centre, offering a regular programme of seminars and conferences on historic and contemporary slavery. Plans for a Teachers' Institute are already well advanced. It is the intention to use all of these contacts to publicise 'Child Cargo' and to ensure that it reaches the widest audience possible. It is also important to mention here the success of a DVD/package on the American slave Venture Smith, again developed in collaboration with colleagues in WISE, which has been distributed to over 800 schools in the state of Connecticut, USA. As already mentioned, the project team proposes to work closely with the National Association of Schoolmasters and Union of Women Teachers, involving them in both the developmental stages of the project but also in its marketing. Kevin Bales' contact with Walk Free and other anti-slavery organizations, including Anti-Slavery International, will also prove useful in terms of national marketing, as will WISE's contacts with local MPs, among them Diana Johnson. For all of these reasons, we believe that WISE is uniquely placed to ensure that the proposal has maximum impact. To that end, it will be one of the key responsibilities of Dr Nigel Shaw to liaise with these different groups and to devise an effective and comprehensive commercialisation strategy for 'Child Cargo', so as to put in place future pathways to impact with schools, musuems, UKHTC/Serious Crime Division, Comic Relief and other NGO partners. We should also mention two other important local pathways to impact. One of these in Hull's annual Freedom Festival, which attracts 80,000 people each year. WISE has close links with the Freedom Festival and the Director sits on its Advisory Board. The other pathway is Hull City of Culture 2017. WISE has been at the forefront of the University's contribution to 2017, particularly the 'freedom' theme, which will form an important part of the year-long programme of events. The Freedom Festival provides an obvious opportunity for us to trial 'Child Cargo' in September 2014, while 2017 offers a further opportunity to introduce it to national and international audiences. We are fully aware of these opportunitires and through our contacts with Freedom Festival and Hull City of Culture 2017 we feel confident that we can deliver on them. Finally, there is the potential here to run a series of workshops or day conferences on the making of 'Child Cargo' and school activities with the Cargo performers to explore slavery, captivity and liberation. Again, Dr Shaw will take responsibility for following up on these opportunities, as he will for developing a clear marketing stragety for the project. Given the nature of this proposal, we will need to be energetic, proactive and innovative in developing pathways to impact but feel that we have right team to do so.