Impact case study database

In October 2016, Newington Green Unitarian Church, the oldest non-conformist meeting house in London still in use, was added to English Heritage's 'At Risk' Register. Midgley’s research expertise in the intersecting histories of women’s anti-slavery activism, the emergence of feminism, and the role of Unitarians in the radical transnational networks of religious dissent and radical social reform was crucial in securing a successful bid to the Heritage Lottery Fund. The award of GBP1,730,000 in Autumn 2018 funded a major restoration, which was completed in June 2020. As a result, the Church was removed from Historic England’s ‘at risk’ list in October 2020 ( E2). The HLF funding, which Midgley was instrumental in winning, also provided 5 new paid employment opportunities, with a projected involvement of 170 volunteers from the local community.

The Church was founded in 1708 and graces one side of Newington Green, at the heart of a diverse inner-city community in London and it is today a unique ‘non-religious church’ with over 100 members. In the late eighteenth century, it was the meeting place for internationally renowned political radicals and religious dissenters, including Mary Wollstonecraft, author of A Vindication of the Rights of Woman. Over the past decade it has flourished, but its survival was threatened by the decay of the building. Midgley’s research ( R1-R5) enabled the Church to frame an ambitious application to the Heritage Grants Open Programme focused on creating a living centre for exploring ‘the dissenting legacy at the birthplace of feminism’. Midgley demonstrated how this might be achieved through a public colloquium at the Church in September 2017, ‘Paths to Freedom’ ( R1- R3). This event initiated the Church’s partnership with Benjamin Franklin House, highlighted the building’s links with slavery and abolition, connected historians with contemporary activists, and attracted very positive feedback from the 34 attendees ( E3). Following the success of the HLF bid, the Chair of the Church Committee acknowledged: ‘Your knowledge of the historical context for our community was invaluable in helping us shape the narrative for our bid’. Referring to projected on-site and online public engagement numbers over a 3.5 year period, he stated that ‘as a result of your knowledge and experience, we have secured a grant that will allow around 70,000 people to engage with the Meeting House and its heritage' ( E1).

In 2020 a new centre was launched at the restored Church, linking the building’s radical legacy with contemporary dissenting thought and activism. Midgley co-produced 7 large historical interpretation boards and an audio guide ( R1- R5). These enabled a wide range of visitors to engage with the Church’s legacy as an internationally significant hub of dissent, and the ‘birthplace of feminism’. As the Community and Learning Manager noted: ‘there was a real value in [your insights into] the wider historical context … which our specific history fits into … [and the] suggestions to make text more accessible and engaging with audiences’ ( E4).

Midgley also provided in-person and recorded historical training to local volunteer building tour guides. As the Volunteer Manager acknowledged: ‘Through Clare's brilliant take she is contextualising the history of NGMH for our new volunteers (usually non-congregants). This has resulted in volunteers having had an enriching insight to the history as well as links between local residents, historical figures and the building right up to today’ ( E5). Tours began in September 2020 (20 visitors weekly) but have been highly constrained by pandemic restrictions. Most heritage project activities are currently conducted online, through the project website, which includes a blog by Midgley on local activist Sophia Dobson Collett (108 views) ( R5) ( E5).

Until recently, the public memorialisation of key women in Britain has been limited. Midgley's research instigated a successful grass roots campaign to erect the first ever public memorial to Mary Wollstonecraft, founding mother of modern feminism ( R1). The renowned artist, Maggi Hambling CBE, was commissioned to create a sculptural memorial to Wollstonecraft, which was unveiled on 10 November 2020 on Newington Green opposite the newly-restored Church. The memorial has already generated a great deal of public interest and controversy in the press ( E6). In April 2014, Midgley co-organised a ‘Women Inspire Change’ all-day event in honour of Mary Wollstonecraft at the Church, and presented her research on the British and Indian founders of modern feminism ( R1, R6). This event, attended by c. 60 people, enhanced public understanding of Mary Wollstonecraft and the foundations of modern feminism internationally, and advanced fund-raising for the 'Mary on the Green’ project, which eventually raised GBP143,000 to fund the memorial.

Public bodies and cultural institutions increasingly endeavour to make Britain’s heritage and culture more inclusive to previously under-representative groups, including women and people of BAME backgrounds. Midgley's underpinning research and collaborations with Historic England and the RSC have broadened and deepened public knowledge and understanding of the history of both black and white women’s roles in the abolition of slavery ( R1-R3).

A set of three podcasts, Women and Slavery, ( E7) were recorded for the Historic England website. Initially posted in 2015, they were then further developed by Midgley's research, and have attracted 1,254 listeners. The Diversity Policy Adviser at Historic England capitalised on the posting of the podcasts on the International Day for the Remembrance of the Slave Trade and its Abolition to publicise its inclusion initiatives through a long article incorporating an interview with Midgley in the Independent on Sunday (23 August 2015) (4,000 shares online). This was taken up by the Royal Gazette newspaper in Bermuda, who published a follow-up article highlighting the role of Bermudan-born black abolitionist Mary Prince, quoting from the interview (26 August 2015) ( E7).

Midgley was invited to write an 800-word essay on women abolitionists for the programme notes for ‘ The Whip’, a play at the RSC on the abolition of slavery in Britain, written by a leading black female playwright ( E8). The play attracted excellent reviews. It sold 9,187 tickets in February and March 2020, along with 1,893 programmes, reaching an estimated 3,800 readers ( E8). The play's run was suspended by the COVID-19 pandemic. Instead, in October 2020, the RSC aired a live audio version, which was subsequently posted on YouTube in December 2020. It has already been viewed more than 3300 times. The RSC’s Programme Editor commented: ‘ Fantastic – I love it, it’s exactly what we wanted’ and expressed her appreciation that the notes ‘link closely with the content and characters of the play by conveying to audiences the results of your research into the involvement of black and working class women, women's role in pushing anti-slavery policy in a more radical direction, and the links between anti-slavery activism and the emergence of the women's suffrage movement’. As a result ‘The playwright herself is very pleased with the way the content of your notes complements the text of the play’ ( E8).

Since 2015 Aitken’s exhibition has been viewed in Cameroon, Germany and the UK by a diverse audience (approximately 3700 visitors) including students, activists, museum practitioners, educators, and members of the public. In December 2019 it opened at the Goethe Institute (GI) Yaoundé, Cameroon. The GI is Germany’s principal cultural institution. The exhibition met its declared objective of critically engaging with Germany’s colonial past. Black Germany was ground-breaking in becoming the first exhibition on the historical experiences of Black Germans ever staged in the country.( E1) Over three weeks it attracted around 350 visitors and received 1,400 likes on the GI’s Facebook page.( E1) Aitken ran a series of workshops with a dozen local postgraduate students, archivists and schoolteachers, providing them with in-depth knowledge of an aspect of Cameroonian history they knew little about. Several participants were subsequently inspired to carry out their own research and Aitken has continued to provide support in the form of archival materials and texts. A copy of the exhibition was left in Yaoundé as a legacy of the cooperation with the GI, enabling it to help local community and school groups learn more about this shared German/Cameroonian history. ( E1)

In the UK and Germany the exhibition has been staged at fourteen locations including the Museum of Slavery, Liverpool (2015), the GI, Freiburg (2017), Off the Shelf Festival, Sheffield (2019), and the German Historical Institute, London (2019). The latter’s Director praised it as " a prime example of how longstanding, pioneering research can be made more widely accessible."( E6) In Freiburg it served as a ‘frame’ for Here and Black, a series of public events promoting Black German history, and was seen by over 340 visitors. The programme convener described it as a series’ ‘ highlight’, which ‘ raised public awareness’, ‘ imparted inaccessible knowledge’ and demonstrated the contemporary relevance of this forgotten history.( E3) A month-long run at the Global South Studies Centre, Cologne in 2017 was considered “ one of the most successful events in the centre’s history,” contributing ‘ significantly’ to the centre’s outreach activities through reaching a wide and diverse public audience.( E3) 140 people attended an opening public discussion on the marginalisation of Black History, which featured as guest of honour the 93-year-old Black German Holocaust survivor Theodor Michael, about whom Aitken has written.

100% of visitor feedback in the form of guestbook comments and questionnaires was positive. The exhibition was variously described as ‘wonderful’, ‘important’, ‘fascinating’( E2, E4, E7). Visitors expressed surprise at the histories encountered and/or explicitly expressed a desire to find out more (65%). Especially in Germany and Cameroon visitors expressed feelings of empowerment in seeing aspects of their history being told (35%):

“For Afro-German people in Germany like myself it is important, inspiring and incredibly heartening to take part in events like todays.”( E4)

“Thank you that through this you have made us Afro-Germans a little more visible.”( E4)

“Your work sheds tremendous light on the history of our country and world history. It gives the energy to dig further.”( E2)

In Freiburg, African refugees who visited the exhibition were amazed to learn of migrants who 100 years earlier had similarly fought to create a life in Germany. This moved one Gambian man to interview Aitken about this for ‘Our Voice’ on Radio Dreyeckland, a programme aimed at and organised by refugees.( E3)

In Germany, the exhibition received extensive media coverage from national (ARD), regional (WDR), and local (DomRadio) radio stations as part of wider growing media engagement with German colonialism.( E3) This coverage served to extend public awareness of the links between the colonial past and Black German present and the exhibition’s contemporary relevance was explicitly commented on by the Badische Zeitung (circulation 145,000) and Kölnische Rundschau (circulation 250,000). The former praised the ‘incredible and impressive’ biographies presented, while the latter reported that it offered 'new starting points' for recovering this neglected history.( E5)

The exhibition has been used with schoolchildren. In 2019, secondary schoolchildren in Biedenkopf, Germany participated in workshops on anti-racism, centred around the exhibition. Feedback demonstrates they were surprised by the lack of public knowledge about this aspect of their history, while they actively made links between the colonial past and the contemporary experiences of refugees in Europe.(E8) In 2019 Aitken ran workshops with over 70 secondary schoolchildren in Liverpool and Cambridgeshire on Black experiences of Nazi Germany. Pupils' feedback shows the exhibition sparked interest in Black history as well as deepening and broadening their knowledge of German history. Teachers’ responses emphasised the benefits pupils gained from hearing different historical voices, which caused many to think about whose history is represented on the school curriculum.(E8) Several schools are reusing the workshop materials Aitken created with future year groups and these materials have been shared with three further schools enabling them to diversify their curriculum content. Teacher Jess Angell wrote about the value of working with exhibition for Teaching History, a magazine aimed at secondary school teachers: these materials and knowledge are “something we can begin to use when we come to re-plan our Key Stage 3 curriculum.”( E8)

Shaping Remembrance in Germany

Aitken's research has made significant contributions to four recent exhibitions in Germany, enabling museums to bring a Black German dimension to larger historical events.

Aitken was asked by the NGOs Postkolonial Berlin and the Initiative of Black People in Germany to contribute to Zurückgeschaut; the country's first and only permanent exhibition to critically engage with colonial and Black German history. He produced 15 of 25 biographies of Black Germans around which the exhibition is organised. His contribution was considered 'decisive' in enabling the realization of the project.( E9) Over 300 people attended the opening, including the Tanzanian and Namibian ambassadors. In the first 6 months over 4,000 people visited the museum: a 4-fold increase in visitor numbers. In total of 8,000 people have now seen the exhibition, which has received widespread media attention, including featuring on the German Parliament's webpage.( E9) This represents a growing recognition of the country’s need to confront its colonial history. Aitken is currently working with the museum on an expanded version of the exhibition for 2021. This has included mentoring two young, Black German students on how to find and use archival documents for the relaunch. Additionally, two of Aitken's biographies were selected to provide personal stories to a larger exhibition on the history of race at the German Hygiene Museum, Dresden.

Museum director, Dr Goetz only discovered that Black men had lived in interwar Schöneberg after reading Black Germany. Aitken provided biographical and contextual information to enable her to include their stories as an important part of the 2017 exhibition on the district’s previously hidden colonial links. This attracted 10,000 visitors.( E9) The museum continued to diversify the content of its exhibitions and in 2018 it was inspired to use Aitken’s research on the Cameroonian Joseph Bilé as the basis for one of five stories through which the post-World War One experiences of people in Schöneberg were told.

Aitken’s series of exhibitions, public lectures and research activities has often brought him into contact with the descendants of Black Germans he has written about. Correspondence with contemporary Black German families has demonstrated the profound personal impact of the discovery of family histories for those people who had previous little knowledge about their relatives’ lives. The following excerpts from correspondence are indicative of the significance of the recovery of lost family histories for the individuals concerned (E10):

Relative M.W. wrote: " one of my life's puzzles has now been solved", when hearing that Zurückgeschaut featured Aitken's work on her great-grandfather.

J.M. was astonished to see an image of her Togolese great-grandfather at Aitken's exhibition. He sent further photographs and information, which she shared with her wider family: " We … gave them to our grandmother on Christmas, she was extremely happy. … It is very exciting to learn more about your own family this way." Her mother travelled from Germany to see the exhibition in London.

B.E. whose Cameroonian grandfather features in Aitken's work wrote: " I want to thank you so much for bringing my grandfather to life … he was just a man in a photograph … now, all these years later, I’m communicating with his great grand-niece." Aitken connected B.E. with members of her wider family in the US and Cameroon about whom she had no previous knowledge.

T.M., a Black German, was recently connected by Aitken with the family of a Togolese German childhood friend he had grown up with in the 1930s.