Learning spotlight: Rise Up Reflection Space
Co-creation project gets school students thinking about the impact of exhibition material
For the Fitzwilliam Museum’s recent exhibition Rise Up: Resistance, Revolution, Abolition, a group of Year 9 and Year 10 school students from Soham Village College co-created a reflection space for visitors to spend quiet time decompressing after absorbing the exhibition's challenging material about the transatlantic slave trade.
We met up with Henry Gray, Lana Ociepko, Ninh Ngyuyen and Femi Adegoke during the exhibition to hear their ideas and reflections on the co-creation process.
The project was particularly poignant for the Soham students, as their village was at one time the home of Olaudah Equiano, an ex-slave, writer and abolitionist featured in the exhibition.
In addition to visiting the exhibition, the school explored its ties to Equiano through a variety of activities.
Mr Rainey, a history teacher at Soham College, told us, “We took the children to the church in Soham where Equiano and Susannah Cullen were married”. This strengthened the pupils' connection to the exhibition.
Soham College students visiting the Rise Up: Resistance, Revolution, Abolition exhibition, featuring Joy Labinjo's 2022 portrait of Olaudah Equiano.
Soham College students visiting the Rise Up: Resistance, Revolution, Abolition exhibition, featuring Joy Labinjo's 2022 portrait of Olaudah Equiano.
“To start off, we were shown the Equiano family painting. They lived in Soham,” says Henry. “We did some brainstorming about what we would want to include in the reflection space…then we gathered into bigger teams to agree on specific contributions and the overall idea…I was surprised by our ability to effectively compromise with each other’s ideas.”
Lana remembers, “We did a lot of learning first—seeing lots of slide shows, for example, showing modern-day and past racism. If you look in the media and at school, you can still see it…I’ve been surprised while learning about the history of slavery, how cruel humanity can be and the impact it has on our lives.”
“I was interested in how [slave owners] made up an excuse, of being superior, and everyone followed along”, adds Ninh.
A space for learning and reflection
“We had to do the practical stuff”, says Femi, “choose books to put on display, and pick the paint colours. We started with deep blue for thinking, and then added orange to help people express their ideas. If you only think about the issues but don’t bring them out, things won’t change.”
Henry says, “We hope people will evaluate the facts and their opinions in [the Reflective Space] either by talking with others, writing, drawing, or just thinking.”
Femi continues, “Being a part of this and the Black Atlantic learning project has improved my conversation skills and made me more confident to talk about this. I think if my family were involved in the slave trade, we might have been on the ‘other side’ because my surname, Adegoke, is associated with royalty in the Yoruba tribe in Nigeria.”
Ninh wants people to leave with the understanding “that respect is necessary towards different cultures and that they need to learn about history that isn’t talked about enough or recognised.”
Henry adds, “We still talk about it at school with other students who were not involved in the project”, and Femi agrees: “Everyone who took part talks about it outside the visits and outside school. I’m really passionate that [the slave trade] is something we need to talk about.”
Emboldening young creativity
Rosanna Evans, Learning Associate: Schools and Teachers, the Fitzwilliam Museum
Rosanna Evans, Learning Associate: Schools and Teachers, the Fitzwilliam Museum
Learning Associate, Rosanna Evans, has been at the Fitzwilliam Museum for over five years. She project-managed FUTURE/POWER, a project designed to put young people in the driving seat, surfacing the global impact of their local histories.
FUTURE/POWER saw the formation of a youth collective, a group of young people who responded to the Black Atlantic: Power, People, Resistance exhibition in a range of ways, building new skills, new friendships, and new knowledge, and ending with a live drama performance that shared their explorations.
“The idea was to use ‘creative practice’ to think through ideas. The project was funded by the Museums Association programme ‘Mindsets and Missions’, with funding from UKRI as well as the Arts Council England.”
More broadly, Trinity College’s recent generous support to the Museum is enabling the entire Learning and Public Programmes department to build and sustain critical strands of work to deliver strategic impact.
Rosanna adds, "With this support, the museum can build a relationship with young people, expand and refresh our offer, and ensure that young people and impact are at the heart of our work."
This is the first time the Museum has worked with an ‘in-school' youth collective, which made it a journey for teachers as well as students.
“With Trinity’s support, we’re able to continue to develop our young peoples’ programme and open it up for more young people locally and regionally to get involved in event programming, co-curation, careers-linked skills development, to build soft skills, be part of a creative network, engage in critical dialogues and make new social connections.”
Rosanna continues to make improvements to how the projects are run.
“FUTURE/POWER worked like an ambitious after-school club, which was an additional workload for the students at the end of their school day. This time, for the co-design of the Reflection Space for the Rise Up exhibition, sessions were part of the school day.”
The students worked with architectural design studio POoR Collective (Power Out of Restriction), who led a series of workshops, during which they learned about the principles of design, thought about how they wanted visitors to the space to feel, experience or learn, and how to create a space that facilitated this.
“We invited Jade Ecobichon-Gray from Mindset Matters UK to ensure young people felt supported as we reflected on the themes in the exhibition, which include stories of resistance and change—but also the reality of the brutality of the transatlantic slave trade.”
Rosanna was impressed with the depth of engagement the children showed in working towards creating the Reflection Space and the lasting effect of taking part.
“They are so galvanised about the ongoing impact of slavery on our society. You can see this in the labels they wrote for the space.”
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