A Monumental Task

Bristol Old Vic’s Heritage department are going into secondary schools to deliver a new workshop - seven Bristol schools (Bristol Brunel Academy, Bristol Metropolitan Academy, Cotham, Bristol Cathedral Choir, Bedminster Down and Oasis John Williams) are participating in A Monumental Task (AMT).

AMT is a Theatre in Education project that engages young people and their wider communities in discussion around our shared colonial history. Each school group is tasked with creating their own town and devising characters to populate it. Two sessions in, they learn the uncomfortable truth that their town’s founder made his money through the Transatlantic Slave Trade. Not only that, but a statue of him has been present in their town the whole time and no one has acknowledged it. In the remaining sessions, it is up to the young people to decide what to do with the statue. And then they get to do it…

Bristol’s young people are witnessing their community’s diverse reactions to monuments of colonial figures. A Monumental Task aims to put the debate in their hands, as they learn about the Transatlantic Slave Trade from the perspective of towns across the country grappling with the legacy of their colonial past.

When asked what they had learnt, one participant said, ‘…to respect and listen to other people’s ideas.’ Another said their highlight was ‘taking part in democracy’.

Bristol Old Vic is itself a monument to Bristol’s colonial history and we recognise and understand the impact of our beginnings. Statistically, 31% of the 50 original investors directly benefitted from the enslavement and forced migration of Africans. We are continuing our research and interpretation around Bristol Old Vic’s link with the Transatlantic Slave Trade and how we engage with it today. We’ll be sharing more news on that later this year.

AMT asks young people how Bristol Old Vic, the wider cultural and heritage sector, and Bristol itself, should continue to make space for conversations about this legacy and adapt accordingly. In the words of one student, ‘decisions are always really hard, especially when you’re part of a community. You’ve got to adapt all those ideas.’

An exhibition on A Monumental Task will be on display in our pit passageway from 27 March. Come down to Bristol Old Vic and have a look!

A collection of images from the workshops of young people constructing the narrative of their town’s founder, by collating facts from real-life historical figures known to have benefited from the slave economy, who have monuments in varying towns, cities, and villages in the UK and deciding what to do with the monument.