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The role transatlantic enslavement played in shaping Manchester is at the heart of a new exhibition developed in partnership by the Guardian and the city’s Science and Industry Museum.
The exhibition is the first time the museum, which tells the story of Manchester’s transformation into the world’s first industrial city, has put the links between enslaved African people, cotton and the city at the centre of a display.
Combined with a public engagement project, the free exhibition aims to raise public understanding of how transatlantic slavery shaped the city’s growth, the UK’s economic development and global capitalism, exploring the continued impact of the trade in human beings and cotton on lives today.
Produced by the Science and Industry Museum and the The Scott Trust Legacies of Enslavement programme, it will be developed with African-descendant and diaspora communities through local and global collaborations and features new research.
Katharine Viner, the editor-in-chief of Guardian News & Media, said it was a “fundamental part” of the restorative justice programme launched in response to the newspaper’s 19th-century founders’ connections to transatlantic enslavement. “We are announcing two years before launch so that we can work with the city’s communities – particularly those of Caribbean and African descent – to shape the exhibition,” she said.
It will open in early 2027 in the Science and Industry Museum’s special exhibitions gallery and will run for a year, followed by permanent displays. A permanent schools programme and a city-wide events programme are also being launched.
The museum occupies the site of Liverpool Road station, through which cotton produced by enslaved people once flowed.
The exhibition was announced at an event in Manchester by Viner, in conversation with Joshi Herrmann, founder of the Mill, at which they discussed the history of the Guardian, which was established in Manchester, and its founders’ links to transatlantic slavery.
The Scott Trust Legacies of Enslavement programme is a 10-year restorative justice project launched in 2023, which aims to improve public understanding of how enslavement impacts Black communities today – with a strong focus on Manchester.
The project will develop the museum’s existing gallery content and ongoing and growing work on the links between Manchester’s growth into an industrial powerhouse and a textile industry reliant on colonialism and enslavement, while sharing more inclusive history of a city that prides itself on being at the forefront of radical ideas, through a collaborative re-examination of the past.
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Viner added: “Many of the Guardian’s 19th-century founders profited from transatlantic enslavement, principally through Manchester’s role in the cotton industry. A fundamental part of our restorative justice work in response is focused on the region and our aim is to build greater awareness and a deeper understanding of the city’s historical links to transatlantic enslavement.
“This partnership with the Science and Industry Museum will combine knowledge and experience of Manchester with thoughtful collaboration that will be vital to serve the communities most impacted by these lasting legacies.”
Sally MacDonald, the director of the Science and Industry Museum, said: “This will be an exhibition about important aspects of our past that are profoundly relevant to the world we live in today.
“Revealed from the perspectives of those who experienced enslavement and whose lives have been shaped by its legacies, the exhibition will explore themes of resilience, identity and creativity alongside exploitation and inequality, and will feature a specific focus on the ways that scientific and technological developments drove and were driven by transatlantic slavery.”
