According to the Global Slavery Index (2018) there are an estimated 47,000 people living in modern slavery in Guatemala. Guatemalan men, women, and children are exploited in forced labour within the country, often in agriculture or domestic service, and in the garment industry, and domestic service in Mexico, the United States, and other countries. Indigenous Guatemalans, including children, are particularly vulnerable to and exploited in forced labour, including in tortilla making shops. Guatemalan children are exploited in forced begging and street vending, particularly within Guatemala City and along the border with Mexico. 8-year-old Fatima has to work on a coffee farm fetching water in order to help her mother earn enough money. Fatima’s mother described how “we leave at 6 or 6:30 and we work until 3pm. She takes care of her little brother. When she’s not doing that she’s helping me work. When we finish watering coffee plants, we pick up wood. There are times when I don’t have enough. This is why I couldn’t send her to school this year. She wanted to but I just couldn’t pay for that. Fatima has never been in school. I think she would be a good student so she could learn a lot. She could go forward and support her family in the future.”
Brazil is a source country for men and boys trafficked internally for forced labor which accounts for most instances of modern slavery in Brazil. It is particularly prevalent in manual labour sectors such as construction, manufacturing, factory and domestic work and occurs in rural and urban areas, mainly through debt bondage schemes. In rural areas workers are immobilised in estates until they can pay off debts often fraudulently incurred; their identity documents and work permits are frequently retained; they are often physically threatened and punished by armed guards and some have been killed while attempting to flee. Debt bondage involves abusive labour contracting schemes operated by contractors known locally as empreiteiros or gatos, often engaged in other types of seasonal labour contracts. Nelson, 46, was trapped with his family in forced labour on a coffee farm in Brazil.
Plant Invasion was a family event of dance, drama, music and design, celebrating the diverse origins of food in everyday diets. The project looked at the origins of tea, and at the trade routes through Liverpool associated with sugar, coffee, tobacco, rice, cotton and enslaved peoples. The festival was organised by the Liverpool charity Hope Street Ltd, and took place at the Palm House in Liverpool's Sefton Park. Fifteen community groups prepared performances and displays based on their investigations into the journeys of non-indigenous plants and the routes they took in arriving in the UK.
In consultation with local community groups, in 2007 the Natural History Museum commissioned new research into its collections that link slavery and the natural world. The research uncovered experiences of enslaved people and the use of plants in their everyday life, as food, medicines and poisons. It also examined the complex relationships between enslaved people and naturalists exploring newly-colonised lands. The museum ran a series of public events, co-hosted by Race on the Agenda, which aimed to bring the historical, scientific and public viewpoints together. It created online educational resources on themes such as Commercial Plants, Everyday Life, Diet and Nutrition, and Resistance. The museum also developed cross-curricular ideas for school lessons in Science using the context of slavery, looking at foods across different cultures, for example.
Uncomfortable Truths at the Victoria and Albert Museum sought to expose how embedded the transatlantic slave trade was within British culture during the 18th and 19th centuries through art and design. A series of five trails - 'Traces of the Trade' - explored the permanent collections on display through the following themes: Consuming the Black Atlantic, Black Servants in British Homes, Britain and the West Indies, Representing Slavery and Abolitionism, Gold and Slaves Transnational Trade Links. An exhibition of contemporary art examined the impact of the legacies of slavery on modern art and design. The Victoria and Albert Museum commissioned new works by Yinka Shonibare, Romauld Hazoume, Julien Sinzogan and Keith Piper. These and other contemporary interventions by a total of 11 artists were displayed throughout the museum. This exhibition later toured to Ferens Art Gallery in Hull.
The 'Truth and Rights' season of events highlighted often untold stories of Black British heroes, including focus on the actor Ira Aldridge. Visitors were also offered discussions, debates, displays and an eight week free art course. A two-day conference, 'From Cane Field to Tea Cup: The Impact of the Transatlantic Slave Trade on Art and Design' focused on V&A collections took place in February 2007.
The Museum of London Docklands opened the London, Sugar and Slavery gallery in 2007, and it remains a permanent exhibition. The museum, housed in an old sugar warehouse on London’s West India Dock, retold the narrative of the transatlantic slave trade from the perspective of London, once the fourth largest slaving port in the world. Through personal accounts, film, music, interactive exhibits and over 140 objects, the exhibition looks at the various stages of the transatlantic slave trade, including life and trade on the West India Dock, and conditions for the enslaved on the Middle Passage and the Caribbean plantations. The final section of the gallery focuses on the legacies of the slave trade for British society today. Community collaborations also helped shape the gallery.
The museum also created a walking trail for the local area, highlighting key architectural features and buildings that had a role in the transatlantic slave trade. The Slave Map of London was developed in collaboration with three London museums: the Cuming Museum in Southwark, Bruce Castle Museum in Haringey and Fulham Palace Museum. Users navigated an online map to discover over 100 different locations throughout London which played a part in the transatlantic slave trade and the fight to end it. A schools programme that accompanied the opening of the exhibition included drama performances and workshops. Courses that ran alongside the exhibition in 2007 included ‘Resistance and Achievement: the story of African and Caribbean people in Britain’, in partnership with Middlesex University.
In 2018, the museum reflected on the 10 year anniversary of London, Sugar and Slavery with a workshop to explore the significance of the gallery, with contributions from artists, museum practitioners and emerging artists.
An exhibition by the City of Westminster Archives Centre focused on the impact of the transatlantic slave trade and its abolition in Westminster, which drew on the Centre's archives and local studies collections. Links explored included the parish of St Anne's Westminster with St John's Antigua, and the large circle of planters living in Marylebone in the 18th and 19th centuries. The exhibition also documented the lives of the African residents of Westminster during the age of the slave trade. Some of the individuals looked at in the exhibition included James Somerset, Granville Sharp, Ignatius Sancho, Ottobah Cugoano, Olaudah Equiano, and the African activists who styled themselves 'Sons of Africa'.
The Bittersweet exhibition was held during the summer of 2007 at Tissington Hall, Derbyshire, home of the FitzHerbert family since the 17th century. The exhibition and accompanying booklet by Frances Wilkins describe life, work and slavery on four Jamaican sugar plantations inherited by the FitzHerbert family in the 18th century - Blue Mountain, Forrest, Grange Hill and Vere, plus the coffee plantation of Retrieve Mountain - and subsequently managed from Tissington Hall. Research of the FitzHerbert papers held at Derbyshire Record Office revealed evidence about the lives of the enslaved and the overseers, the sugar production process and the connections to plantation owners in England. The exhibition was housed at Tissington during 2007 and then was available on loan to other houses in Derbyshire and to local schools. The exhibition coincided with Tissington’s annual Well Dressing celebrations. The special 2007 design to commemorate the bicentenary was by Wendy Greatorex (photographer Glyn Williams). Tissington Hall was one of several member houses of the Historic Houses Association to mark the bicentenary.
This small exhibition at Norwich Castle was part of the Norfolk's Hidden Heritage project. It included portraits of Norfolk-based Thomas Fowell Buxton, who was instrumental in the cause for abolition of British colonial slavery, and Amelia Opie, Norwich poet, author and anti-slavery campaigner. The exhibition also featured rare decorative items from the Castle collections relating to the consumption of tea and sugar, and 18th century books loaned by the Norfolk Heritage Centre. An events programme included lunchtime gallery talks and school activities.
The Bittersweet programme by the Gateway Gardens Trust involved 80 free guided garden visits over two years, around more than 30 gardens in Wales with a range of community groups, schoolchildren and lifelong learners. The themes of the visits and a mobile exhibition were the links between the slave trade and historic gardens, their makers, what they planted, Welsh abolitionists and the wider links with local communities in Wales. Historic gardens provided the starting point, looking at how everyday vegetables and fruits - beans, potatoes, tomatoes etc. - first reached the UK from the Americas. The project also looked at the history of afternoon tea, and the links between sugar, cotton and tea and slavery. The groups reflected on how many industries, grand houses and gardens were built from wealth linked to slavery, such as Cyfarthfa Ironworks in Merthyr and the expansion of the slate industry at Penrhyn Quarry. Early 18th century-style newspapers were produced, aimed at schoolchildren and adults.
Gardens involved included Cardiff’s Bute Park, Swansea’s Singleton Park, the National Botanic Garden in Carmarthen, Gwydir Castle in Llanrwst, Dyffryn Gardens, Portmeirion, Penrhyn Castle, Picton Castle, Dinefwr Park and Castle and Aberglasney Gardens.
Everywhere in Chains was an umbrella project created for the bicentenary commemorations in 2007, by a collaboration between Amgueddfa Cymru - National Museum Wales, the National Library of Wales, University of Wales, Bangor and CyMAL: Museum Archives and Libraries Wales (part of the Welsh Assembly Government). An exhibition explored Welsh involvement in slavery, especially focusing on the transatlantic slave trade and its abolition, the Black presence in Wales, and legacies of slavery. This was shown at the National Waterfront Museum in Swansea from May to November 2007 before touring to Wrexham County Borough Museum. The touring version of the exhibition was funded by the Welsh Assembly Government. The exhibition in Wrexham included discussion of the painting 'A Negro Coachboy', thought to commemorate a black servant of John Meller, owner of the Erddig estate in the 18th century.
Alongside the exhibition, the Everywhere in Chains programme also included lectures, formal learning activities and performances. An educational pack was produced by CyMAL and distributed to every school in Wales in 2009-2010. A community project created a forum in which participants from many cultural backgrounds could voice their ideas about enslavement. The Everywhere in Chains Community Heritage Toolkit captured the learning from this project. The toolkit, launched in 2009, was produced to help individuals, groups and organisations to work with culture and heritage providers to undertake projects focused on the role of Wales in the transatlantic slave trade and issues of modern slavery.
As part of the Revealing Histories: Remembering Slavery project, Manchester Art Gallery highlighted items in its collection of fine art and decorative objects which revealed the wealth generated by the region's involvement in the transatlantic slave trade and the public's consumption of sugar, tea, coffee and tobacco. Additional special events included Tina Tamsho-Thomas performing poetry commissioned in response to the objects connected to sugar. In the exhibition 'Manchester Attitude', local community groups created a new display to express their thoughts about the legacy of Manchester's involvement in the transatlantic slave trade. Examples of these community-led artworks include 'Injustice' (with artists Colette Gilmartin and Tony Curry) and 'Simply Read' (with artist Nathan Carter), available to view on Manchester Art Gallery's website.
York Castle Museum's Unfair Trade exhibition used the museum's collections to explore slavery from the viewpoint of ordinary people, and how consumption of slave-produced everyday commodities - sugar, tea, coffee, cocoa - contributed to the slave trade. It also looked at the part played by York in the abolition of the slave trade and slavery, with the many Quakers of the city supporting William Wilberforce and helping to finance his election campaign. The exhibition continued the focus on consumption into modern life by asking visitors to consider where the products they buy come from. York Castle Museum features a recreated Victorian street, Kirkgate, with its own newspaper, 'The Kirkgate Examiner'. A special edition was distributed to coincide with the exhibition.