There has been a lot of talk, to put it mildly, about Britain’s statues and slavery. But what about Britain’s statues and anti-slavery? It turns out, that, while statues of slavers are among the statues Britain shows off, statues of anti-slavery activists are, in curious contrast, some of the statues Britain hides. To take us into Black History Month in the UK, Dr Coleman asks what, exactly, in its anti-slavery statues, Britain is hiding.

Listen online

Episode 1: Statues They Hide

Episode 2: Back to Plaque?

Further information about the Birmingham 2007 Children’s March can be found on Birmingham City Council's website (via archive.org) at A Shared History, A Shared Future: March for Justice and Family Discovery Day and in MarcusBelben's YouTube video, Breaking the Chains Birmingham - A Shared History, A Shared Future: March for Justice.

Episode 3: Sturge Before Scarman

This episode will be released in November 2021, marking the fortieth anniversary of the publication of the Scarman Report on 25 November 1981, the official response to the 1981 Brixton riots.

About the speaker

Dr Nathaniel Adam Tobias Coleman is an independent scholar-activist, Honorary Research Fellow at the University of Warwick, and Public Engagement Co-ordinator for Citizens Researching Together at the University of Bristol. They are the incoming Project Director of 81 Acts of Exuberant Defiance. Born and based in Birmingham, they are writing a book about our collective memory of the colonial and anti-colonial arguments by which Birmingham built and attempted to abolish British Empire, called The House By the Rivers of Blood.

You can find out more about how they came to write this book on the Reluctant Sites of Memory blog, or listen to them talk about some of the book's themes in De Montford University's YouTube video, Scholar Activism in the UK – Questions of Ethics and Practice.

These podcasts are dedicated to the memory of the late Charles W. Mills (1951-2021), Distinguished Professor of Philosophy at The Graduate Center, City University of New York.

Monuments Research Season

Every Wednesday throughout September we will present new research around monuments in a variety of forms, ranging from pre-recorded lectures to podcasts and artists films.

Topics will include the relationship between monuments, gender and sexuality, the role of religion and politics, monuments and colonial memory, and artists’ responses to monumentality. All material will be available to access online on our website and YouTube channel.