Examples of arts and humanities antislavery projects

As part of the Antislavery Knowledge Network (AKN), we are developing a database of projects that have made use of the arts and humanities in addressing different aspects of contemporary slavery. These projects, from different parts of the world, can be viewed as examples of the possibilities that arts and humanities hold for antislavery work, as illustrations of the methodologies and approaches that can be taken, as well as opportunities to make incremental changes, or provide alternative understandings of what can be done differently.

The database, in addition to being a repository, will also function as a springboard for expanding the network and shaping the potential for future work. We provide here projects that exemplify how the arts and humanities can be used to tackle different forms of enslavement, and the kinds of questions around how we can approach the challenges differently. The various projects also indicate the numerous human rights, heritage, and development aspects, to mention a few, of the ramifications of contemporary slavery and the work to combat it. 

Murals 

18+ Ending Child Marriages in Southern Africa 

Plan International Mozambique (PIM) 

Mozambique 

Murals have emerged as an important mode of creative and artistic expression across the world to interrogate, publicise and engage with questions of social justice in public spaces, but how can they be utilised in addressing contemporary forms of enslavement? 

This campaign selected here was designed to raise awareness on negative aspects of child marriage, to empower girls and change gender norms and practices that drive child marriage.  PIM uses media forum to raise awareness, reflect on how media portrays women/girls and discusses roles of media in empowering them. PIM is running 18+ Ending Child Marriage project, and has also done training sessions for staff, partners, government representatives, schools, etc. on sexual and reproductive health rights. The 2017 Global Estimates of Slavery by the International Labour Organisation (ILO), together with the Walk Free Foundation, included forced marriage into measures of modern slavery. There are estimated 15.4 million people in forced marriage, and the vast majority of these are girls and women. Over a third of the people who were forced to marry were children, of whom 40% were below fifteen at the time when marriage took place.[1] 

At a national level, PIM has supported and contributed to the newly adopted national strategy to reduce child marriage and is a part of the national anti-child marriage coalition, which has supported the production of a national statistics report on the annual number of child marriages in the country. 

A 'Pinkification’ campaign was done in Maputo, Maxixe and Inhambane where pink billboards were erected, buses were painted and mural paintings were visible throughout the cities. 

This project exemplifies the identification of a problem, which in this instance was child marriage, and an intervention that was deemed appropriate to the context.  A recognition of the capacity of the community to participate, by involving young girls in schools, as well as the need for convergence at the national and policy levels, increases the chances of a wider embracing of the efforts, and provides a useful foundation for further work in ending child marriages. It is an acknowledgement of the need to raise awareness and get the affected communities at the forefront of the campaign, and the possibility of changing regulatory frameworks in order to combat child exploitation. 

It becomes important to consider, in the aftermath of such campaigns, as should be the case with all the other examples we give below, what the impact is, and how change can be measured or evaluated?[2] In addition to statistical measures, which are important but not enough on their own, more work has to be done in monitoring and evaluation. Part of the AKN’s thrust is then to work with commissioned projects to ensure that we learn from these previous projects, and are attuned to the gaps that are apparent in the effectiveness of previous projects in attaining measurable or positive change, action and impact. 

Theatre 

To Be Like This Rock Umsindo Theatre Projects, South Africa 

Anti-Human Trafficking Play 

Theatre has historically been important in challenging orthodoxies, provoking conversation, and providing a platform for the multiple representations of human existence. Theatre, in addition to be entertaining, can challenge how we think and enable us to imagine the lives of others, or even a different world to the one we currently inhabit. 

The play “To Be Like This Rock” was first performed at Ishashalazi Women's Festival in 2009 and won 1st prize. It was later developed with mentors Neil Coppen and Debbie Lutge in 2010 under the auspices of Twist Theatre Development Projects, performed at community art festivals and professional theatres. 

The play is set in contemporary South Africa in a village outside Durban, where scouts convince some parents that they should let their children travel for well-paid jobs. The theme of the play is the need to escape, first from poverty and then from forced labour. The focus is on the horrors faced by women and children experiencing human trafficking. 

The play is an opportunity to dramatize, in accessible and mobile ways, the tragedies of hope and aspiration, embodied in the desire for a better life. The context of poverty is conducive to aspirations that make many susceptible to trafficking. The intricate details for life as trafficked persons, which are not always available of the general public, can then be accessed in theatrical form, simultaneously raising awareness as well as tugging at the heartstrings of the audience. 

In this instance, the significance of a grassroots arts organisation is shown by the community theatre company that undertakes the play, with impacts on capacity and the profile of that organisation. The emotional currency and power of the dramatized experiences of human trafficking can be evidenced through the reviews the play received. Also, its mobility as a touring play ensured it reached a wider audience, and provoked discussion and debate on human trafficking in South Africa. 

Music 

Child marriages Concert, Zimbabwe 

Music is regarded as being a “universal language”, where the sounds and rhythms become realms of their own grammar, communicating in ways that sometimes our language in the everyday falls short. In ways similar to theatre, yet different, music simultaneously carries, and is carried by social life. Music as social life has the capacity to bring together disparate people, creating, in moments, sonic communities that are amenable to multiple messages. The valence of music, especially in the age of celebrity and the mechanical reproduction of art, is apparent. As a pervasive language, music can be a powerful avenue for communicating the message of anti-slavery work, galvanising communities to be aware of and address different forms of exploitation

This concert was organised by Padare Men’s gender forum, Women Affairs, Gender and Community Development ministry, Child Rights Coalition and Women’s Coalition Partners, as well as United Nations Women, United Nations Children’s Fund and United Nations Population Fund. A well-known and respected local musician of Oliver Mtukudzi’s calibre headlining the concert brought much needed publicity and gravity to an issue demanding urgent attention. In addition, music conveys the message in a language that is amenable to the general public, without presenting itself as an affront, and music has the potential to also captivate an audience that might otherwise be uninterested in research reports and statistics on child marriage. 

Through the work of different civil society organisations with communities and their advocacy work particularly with the government, a discussion on child marriages as a form of exploitation became widespread amongst the Zimbabwean public, especially in the reportage in national newspapers, as well as on social media. 

Although the current Zimbabwean constitution stipulates that no one should be married against their will and calls on the state to ensure no children are pledged into marriage, it was only in 2016, after a constitutional challenge, that a ruling was passed declaring parts of the old Marriage Act unconstitutional, and ruling that no person, girl or boy, should be married before the age of 18. 

The Child Marriages concert exemplified a moment of galvanising different members of Zimbabwean and international civil society, together with other members of the community, to spread the message on the detrimental consequences of child marriage, and to also advocate for changes in law. 

The efforts of the civil society organisations may be regarded as having succeeded with the constitutional ruling outlawing child marriages. Participating musicians such as Oliver Mtukudzi have gone to write their own songs against child marriage, with one called “Haasati Aziva”. 

Although this information is not yet available, it will be useful to know, since the passage of the court ruling, how many cases are being reported, the number convictions arising from such cases, and other reports from the various civil society organisations working on child marriages in Zimbabwe to establish the extent and nature of community buy in, as well as the effectiveness of the law.  Such information can be a crucial source for monitoring and evaluating the efforts of the different organisations, pointing out what works better, and rectifying what does not.

This is especially so recognising how regulatory frameworks against child exploitation, as with many other aspects of modern slavery, may not always work in tandem with gender, religious, cultural and traditional attitudes to issues such as child marriages, as well as with the various vested interests that may be at stake, such as the structures of traditional authority, and the conditions of poverty and abjection.

Art 

Lace and Slavery, Godffried Donkor, Nottingham 

The relationship of art to slavery, historical and contemporary, is a complex and contentious one. As representation of, resistance to, re-visitation of, slavery, amongst many other ways of perceiving it, art has been instrumental in engaging with enslavement. Art also occupies the realms of memory and heritage, the tensions around how we remember, what we remember, and why we must remember. Art about slavery’s past can offer important lessons for the present, yet it is also an important way of occupying gallery and museum spaces that can engage the public on an issue which might otherwise exist on the margins of the dominant understandings and representations of art. 

The work by Donkor was an opportunity to investigate slavery in ways neglected by the more mainstream abolition events and to expose its hidden and unexpected aspects, both in the past and present day. 

Godfried Donkor: Lace & Slavery was the first instalment of Histories of the Present, Nottingham Contemporary’s year-long pre-opening programme of exhibitions and events, taking place at historical sites in and around Nottingham. Lace & Slavery was a collaborative project by The New Art Exchange and Nottingham Contemporary, and one that grew from Donkor’s 2007-08 artist residency and exhibition at Wollaton Hall’s Yard Gallery.

As part of the contextual framework for Donkor’s project, Nottingham Contemporary programmed the symposium Histories of Slavery, in collaboration with the University of Nottingham Institute for the Study of Slavery, and the lecture series, Culture After Slavery, in partnership with Nottingham Trent University.

The project brought together aspects of research, collaboration and participation, with different institutions working together for a common goal. Art was recognised as an innovative way of making the connections between slavery past and present, and eliciting engagement with the not so obvious aspects of contemporary slavery, that exist hidden in plain sight, or even on our bodies.

For example, Lace and Slavery can be regarded as being evocative of the relationship that contemporary fashion has to historical slavery, as well as to the “sweat shop” that characterises supply chains and modern slavery.

A project of this nature lends itself to inviting the public to engage with, respond to, elucidate on the work of art, and is open to the multiple vantage points from which those who experience the art may be coming from. It also enables spaces dedicated of memory, the exhibition of art and heritage to confront the challenges of the past and present, in ways that invite different forms and measurements of reach and impact, over time. 

Film/Photography 

Voice of freedom project, in collaboration with Antislavery International. 

The visual is an important part of how we make sense of the world, how we access specific sites of the past and present, or how we imagine the future. We, in common parlance, “visualise” things. Documenting the experiences of, and the aftermath of enslavement through the visual offers the opportunity to engage with, and reveal to, the public the conditions of enslavement and the importance of anti-slavery work. Without turning the experiences and survivors of enslavement into sensationalised spectacle, visual methods are a useful tool for antislavery efforts. 

Voice of Freedom works with women who have escaped trafficking and torture, bringing the voices of the enslaved to a wide public for the first time. The project enables the women to document their lives, feelings and experiences through the camera lens, and supports them as they create texts in their own words to accompany the images. This works within the discipline of participatory photography – a recognised tool for advocacy and social activism. 

The agency of the survivors of modern slavery is at the fore in this project. Narratives of enslavement and survival are made visceral by the visual work, the photographs taken by the women, and the language they use to describe the photographs and why they chose them. Photography becomes a way of them telling their own stories in ways they feel comfortable, and rather than existing as objects viewed through the gaze of someone’s lens, they focus the lens on what they would like to share. 

In telling any story, representation always matters, and the voices of the survivors of enslavement provide the opportunity for participation by both the survivors, and the general public, in understanding and appreciating the experiences of exploitation, as well as knowing better what those who survive need, or want, and how to better prevent such exploitation from taking place in the first instance. 

Humanities/Heritage 

One of the thrusts of the AKN is to enable engagement with heritage and memory around slavery in ways that engender a complex understanding of slavery in history, as a reminder of the horrors of enslavement, the factors that were conducive to it, and the continuities with experiences of enslavement and exploitation in the present. A project that typifies work on slavery, memory, institutional collaboration and innovative and creative approaches to heritage is the Slave Wrecks Project. 

The Slave Wrecks Project (SWP)[3] is a long-term collaboration between six core partners, including the Smithsonian’s National Museum of African American History and Culture (NMAAHC), the U.S. National Park Service Submerged Resources Center (NPS SRC) and its Southeast Archaeological Center (NPS SEAC), the George Washington University Capitol Archaeological Institute (GWU CAI), IZIKO Museums of South Africa, the South African Heritage Resources Agency (SAHRA), and Diving With a Purpose (DWP). It integrates research, training and education in the pursuit of new scholarship on the global slave trade, utilizing the lens of slave shipwrecks as its unique point of entry. 

Launched in 2008 as the Southern African Slave Wrecks and Diasporan Heritage Routes Project with a seed grant from the Ford Foundation, the project initially focused on Southern Africa, launching its first research efforts in the Republic of South Africa.  The relationship between heritage and development is prominent in the project. From its inception the project has sought to assist developing-country partners in the advancement of cultural resource management programs that can preserve and protect irreplaceable heritage related to the historical slave trade and to the processes that formed Africa’s global diaspora, while also fostering a unique niche for regional cultural tourism with tangible economic benefits and promoting capacity-building for educational, heritage and scientific institutions in partnering countries. 

Now in its second phase (2012–2017), SWP has expanded the geographic scope of the project to reflect the global reach and impact of the African slave trade. While the project continues to pursue and expand its activities throughout Southern Africa, the current phase also features the development of activities in other regions as well. Work is currently in progress and partnerships are under development in North and South America, in the Caribbean, in West Africa and in the East Africa/Indian Ocean regions. 

The projects highlighted in this discussion are a sample of the many others that will constitute the database, chosen here to exemplify the multiple forms of art and humanities interventions that can be made, and the potential for doing more. This is especially so in relation to monitoring and evaluation and the measurement of impact, where many exciting projects in the end have little by way of such reporting mechanisms. These are crucial in establishing a foundation for future research and meaningful impact, and to avoid duplication and the repetition of past mistakes. They also reveal the importance of responding to modern slavery as a developmental issue approached from a critical standpoint, wherein the socio-economic and political contexts within which enslavement occurs are understood and responded to appropriately. Whether it is the challenge of child marriage, the trafficking of women and children, or engagement with heritage and the differences and continuities of slavery’s past and present 

Those who are interested in the work of the AKN can find out more information on the project website, or get in touch at akn@liverpool.ac.uk

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