Output details

Re:Interpretation

This DVD-Rom was the principal outcome of a participatory action research project that explored legacies of Britain’s involvement in the transatlantic slave trade, focusing on three stately homes in the South West owned by the National Trust. Commissioned by the Trust in 2007 as part of bicentenary events marking the slave trade’s abolition, Sobers led a diverse group of young people and adults (including a senior citizens group) from black and minority ethnic organisations in an investigation of these properties’ connections with slavery and colonialism. Participants were encouraged to respond creatively through, for instance, animation sequences, short films, performances, poetry and cookery, and also debate forums and auto-ethnographic reflections. Sobers’ own research drew on National Trust archives and disparate secondary sources to help unearth the properties’ hidden history. The creative responses and historical data were made into an interactive multimedia DVD-Rom, housed in a purpose-built display unit. This constructed a multiple-layered narrative, allowing for a more nuanced and complex presentation than that offered by the linear narrative of a traditional documentary. Thus the tensions between factual and emotive presentation and responses could be expressed and explored. In 2008, the interactive exhibit toured the houses and other National Trust properties, the Trust’s head office, Swindon, and a high-profile event at The Pump Rooms, Bath.

Re:Interpretation has been used and discussed in numerous schools and colleges, and through online fora. Papers evaluating the project were delivered at the‘British Country House and Slavery’ conference at the LSE (Sobers and co-author Rob Mitchell, November 2009), the Association for Studies in the Conservation of Historic Buildings conference (March 2013) where the DVD-Rom was also disseminated at several other symposia and events (see portfolio). A revised version of the paper was published in Madge Dresser and Andrew Hann (eds), Slavery and the British Country House (2013).