This exhibition brings together portraits of the influential figures of the 17th, 18th and 19th Centuries who played an important role in slavery and the anti-slavery history of Newington Green Meeting House, its surrounding area and worldwide. Through the portraits of abolitionists, the formerly enslaved, and slave-owners we shed light on our understanding and acknowledgement of the role that slavery has had in the history of the Meeting House and in Britain’s socio-economic and cultural development. This will form a part of the Meeting House’s commitment to improving our understanding of the socio-cultural and socio-economic legacy of slavery, its political legacy, and its consequences.
Panel
David Walter [panellist]
David has been a volunteer researcher for the Heritage Project at the Newington Green Unitarian Meeting House, since 2019, he completed his degree in History and International Relations, at Birkbeck University College London in 2020.
David was born in Walthamstow, but has lived in Hackney for most of his life. He has been a congregant at the Newington Green Meeting House since 2008. David has worked with my fellow volunteers to archive and record different materials and artefacts of the Meeting House, using photography and databases, and store them at the C.L.R James Library, Dalston, Hackney.
David is one of the blog writers of the meeting house and presented a paper at the Festival of Dissent titled "Mary Wollstonecraft Shelley: Frankenstein: The Modern Prometheus, Cyberpunk, and the Dark Future of Modernity"
Simon Strickland Scott [panellist]
Simon is a former university lecturer with degrees from Swansea and Leeds Universities. He graduated with a PhD in Sociology in 2002 and in a somewhat abrupt career change became a Station Assistant with London Underground where he worked for 18 years, five and a half of which were spent as an RMT union representative. Simon is now a full-time carer and a member of the congregation at New Unity.
Ken Olende [panellist]
Ken Olende writes and lectures on race, Africa and history. He is researching a PhD on race and the current crisis at Brighton University. He previously worked as a tutor for the Workers’ Educational Association and a journalist.
Johannah Barrett [facilitator]
Johannah, a leader of teaching and learning across the curriculum, is also a writer and qualified Clerkenwell and Islington Tour Guide. She has a keen interest in bringing to light the histories of less-represented or less well-known people, particularly those of writers and those local to our community.
