A talk on Bristol glass, taxidermy pangolin and disrupting colonial silences.
Join us for an insightful evening exploring Bristol’s colonial past and present through the lens of two co-created projects, ‘Tales From the Bottle: Exploring the Legacy of English Glassmaking’ and ‘From Ghana to Bristol: Reimagining Reparative Justice in a Postcolonial World’.
Historian Zakiya McKenzie and scientist Kirill Vlasov have collaborated on ‘Tales From the Bottle’ — a partnership with Bristol Blue Glass and Bristol Museum & Art Gallery — to investigate the links between Bristol’s flourishing 18th- and 19th-century glass industry and the city’s central role in Atlantic enslavement and trade. Blending social history, artistic inquiry, and modern chemistry, the project uncovers new narratives of Bristol glass and its entanglement with the colonial histories of the Caribbean, Africa, and the Americas.
Interdisciplinary artists and creative researchers Iman Sultan West and Emmanuella Morsi will also share about their partnership on ‘From Ghana to Bristol: Reimagining Reparative Justice in a Postcolonial World’. Through prior consultations and 1.5-month residency in Ghana with local creatives, farmers, social enterprises and academics, they are exploring how arts, indigenous wisdom and sustainable practices can inform new approaches to addressing colonial harm. This project is an evolution of ‘A Journey Home’ which looked at the history of the taxidermy Pangolin in Bristol Museum, which was taken from Ghana in 1828. This research is informing the development of Bristol Museum’s repatriation strategy in collaboration with Iman Sultan West (A Journey Home), Emmanuella Morsi (Access As A Creative Tool, AAACT) and Dr Edson Burton – where AAACT consults on replication, sustainability, and materiality.
About this talk series
The From the Personal to Planetary talk series is co-produced and co-hosted by the Brigstow Institute, Cabot Institute for the Environment, creative associates Close and Remote and our 10 Personal to Planetary Fellows. This series is running during COP30, the biggest annual conference of negotiations for the future health of our planet. Find out more about COP30 and what the University of Bristol will be doing there.
You might also be interested in the other talks in this series:
- 13 November: The Joy of Activism: Finding Flowers in the Sh*t
- 15 November: Neocolonialism, Extraction and the Cracked Mirror of Capitalism
- 16 November: From Personal to Planetary: Bridging Racial and Climate Justice
- 19 November: Materiality and Museum Extraction: Bristol glass, taxidermy pangolin, and disrupting colonial silences