Free community, arts and heritage events in Lancaster on Bank Holiday Monday

Learn more about Lancaster’s history as the fourth largest transatlantic slave port in the UK through a guided tour, community performances, talks, and take part in a walking vigil from Market Square to the Captured Africans Memorial on St George’s Quay.

What’s on?

11am - Slavery Site Tour led by UCLan’s Prof Alan Rice. This accessible and informative tour takes 1.5 hrs approx. and leaves from Friends Meeting House, Meeting House Lane. Alan is Director of the UCLan Research Centre in Migration, Diaspora and Exile and Co-director of the Institute for Black Atlantic Research.

1pm and 3pm - Facing the Past Community Performances in Market Square: Local people come together to perform ‘Facing the Past’, a creative community response, developed with professional artists, to Lancaster’s connections to the transatlantic slave trade and enduring legacies. A combination of original song, poetry and movement.

4.30pm - A 360 film will be shown of the Lancastrian owned-plantations produced by videographers in St Kitts. The Facing the Past team will share the digital resource that allows people to explore and interact with Lancaster's involvement in transatlantic slavery and the ways in which the history has been memorialised or erased. St John’s Chapel of Ease, 49 North Road.

6pm - Walking Vigil culminates the day’s events... join the group as it starts in Market Square and makes its way in silence down to the Quay. Once at the Captured Africans Memorial, there will be a reading by Facing the Past Steering Group Chair and Vicar of Lancaster Rev Leah Vasey Saunders/ 58 candles will be lit at the memorial to commemorate Black Lancastrians living in the city before 1807.

Facing the Past has grown from the local community response following the vandalism of a memorial of a slave trader in Lancaster Priory’s churchyard and the Black Lives Matter Movement in 2021.

A group of local arts and heritage organisations, faith and community groups, activists and academics have come together to encourage a meaningful response, to raise awareness, and to reveal, reflect, and redress omissions in the way the City of Lancaster has commemorated its role as the fourth largest transatlantic slave port in the UK.

This year, Facing the Past has been leading a cultural programme in Lancaster, including a community festival, participatory events, public consultation, historical research, school and teacher programmes, digital mapping and a digital trail, community archiving, and training opportunities.

The programme aims to lay a foundation to new and future understanding of black presence in Lancaster – and beyond, generating debate and positive action, engaging new audiences and encouraging them to see their historic surroundings in a new light.