2023 marks the 75th anniversary of the arrival of HMT Empire Windrush at Tilbury Docks in Essex. The ship brought to Britain just over 800 passengers who had left the West Indies, the great majority of whom sought to settle and begin new lives in the UK.
In 2021, academic and entrepreneur Dr Les Johnson, perceiving there was no museum provision for the Windrush generation despite their contribution to Britain’s economy, culture, and infrastructure, decided to found a Windrush Museum.
On 24 November 2023, a Memorandum of Understanding was signed at the House of Lords in London between the National Windrush Museum and Royal Museums Greenwich, and a collaboration between the Windrush Museum and the National Maritime Museum was announced.
Blooloop speaks to Johnson about the plans for the new museum, and why it is needed.
Cultural visualisation
Johnson is a visiting research fellow in the Faculty of Arts, Design and Media at Birmingham City University. He was awarded his PhD for research into cultural visualisation, entrepreneurship and innovation.
An alumnus of the Royal College of Art, he was CEO of multi-award winning design, media, marketing and management consultancy firm Equator International, and has worked for the BBC, Channel 4, Carlton Television, The Arts Council, the Tate, the South Bank Centre, the Design Museum, IBM, BPI, Clydesdale Bank, Virgin and Sony, among other cultural development organisations.
A non-executive director and consultant for public and private sector organisations at local, regional and national levels in the UK, he also works internationally as counsel, lecturer and consultant in business development and culture sectors. His academic interests, cultural studies, entrepreneurship and philanthropy are channelled through his foundation. With this, he supports a range of projects, research and enterprise.
“My prime area of investigation and work is to do with cultural visualisation: the idea that you can visualise culture and heritage in new and innovative creative ways,” he explains. “The intersection of that idea with museums is important, because museums, to a large extent, visualise culture, our heritage.
How to do museums differently?
His real focus is on innovation: “One of my pet phrases is. ‘How can we do museums differently?’
“I brought that phrase to the Museums Association, and said, ‘Let’s have a look at what existing museums are doing in terms of promoting cultural diversity’ – specifically, how non-represented groups are visualised, discussed, and represented. Early on, we discovered that there were approximately 2,500 museums in the country. But there is nothing to represent Black culture.”
Black culture, and Black popular culture in particular, however, has impacted Britain in a significant way.
“Black Britishness is British. It’s to do with representation. If you’ve got 2,500 museums, it means 2,500 stories are being told and experienced; and 2,500 expressions are being represented. How, then, is it possible that you can have this community who are impacting Britain in such a significant way, but they’re not represented in the museum sector?”
This means that the legacy of this community is not being documented or researched.
“Where do you go to see the legacy of the impact of black popular culture on medicine, for example, or on sports, on music, on innovation?” Johnson asks. “My grandson is four. I’ll take him to the Tate or the V&A, or a science museum. He’ll say, ‘But Granddad, there’s nobody in here that looks like me. Why are you bringing me here?’
“With all that as context, around four or five years ago, I decided that I wanted to found the concept of a Windrush Museum.”
Establishing a National Windrush Museum
The trigger was his mother’s death, just before Covid-19 swept across the globe.
“I was walking on the beach,” he explains. “I looked at my footprints disappearing in the sand as the waves came in, and I equated it to my parents’ generation. They came to Britain in the 1950s, and, in fact, managed to get back to Jamaica. I thought about them being in Britain, and contributing to Britain. My father was an engineer, and my mother was a nurse. Yet there was nothing in Britain that gave any description that they were there.
“It was odd: it’s almost as if the Windrush generation hasn’t been embedded into British history.”
Johnson, an entrepreneur, decided to fund the museum as a startup initially.
“I have worked in the heritage sector for a long time. So, I know how long it takes to get these things done. I met a group of individuals who wanted to get together to launch the museum, and I said, ‘I’ll give you a challenge: if you can get a feasibility study done, I’ll fund it all until it gets legs.’
“Now, it’s like a forest fire. People are so enthused by the concept of a National Windrush Museum and have got behind it to the extent that, on Friday the 24th of November, 2023, history was made at the House of Lords.”
Making history
The occasion concerned, which coincided with the 75th anniversary year of the arrival of the Empire Windrush, constituted the signing of a Memorandum of Understanding between the National Windrush Museum (NWM) and Royal Museums Greenwich (RMG) at the House of Lords.
The Memorandum of Understanding articulates a collaboration between the institutions. Working with leading experts and museum curators, the project will enable the museum to tell untold stories, bring the Windrush and Caribbean Diaspora communities into the National Maritime Museum, and share a pivotal British maritime history not currently communicated through the collections of NMM.
Great to welcome friends for signing of the Memorandum of Understanding between National Windrush Museum and Royal Museums of Greenwich at @UKHouseofLords. Legacy for the past & our descendants @TheVoiceNews @LeroyLogan999 @brendaemmanus #Windrush pic.twitter.com/0XLj4A50ju
— Floella Benjamin (@FloellaBenjamin) November 26, 2023
The project aims to empower British communities and Caribbean settlers to find out about and celebrate their histories, sharing the influences of the Windrush generation and their cultural influences on Britain.
Activities outlined in the Memorandum include the development of new programmes for schools and young people, collaborative research, and digital media initiatives.
“There were around 120 people present,” Johnson comments. “The Memorandum of Understanding was signed to great applause. It was an emotional moment for a lot of people. One lady, for example, travelled from Wales. She was 86, and she wanted to witness this moment. She came up onto the podium because she wanted physically to see the signing of this document, representing the possibility of this museum.”
The National Windrush Museum and the National Maritime Museum
The National Maritime Museum holds the world’s largest maritime collection telling stories of Britain’s relationship with the sea. It also has a history of working with the African Caribbean community. Johnson explains:
“Over the last three to four years, the NMA has held regular events with an organisation called the Caribbean Social Forum. On an annual basis, 5,000 to 6,000 people from a mixed community will come to the Maritime Museum. They have seen both that there is an audience, and that their own collection needs to be revamped so that it’s more representative.”
The partnership, therefore, makes sense. Nevertheless, he points out:
“It was a brave step to take. They are the biggest maritime museum in the world; they have a massive collection, but they have realised that innovation needs to be the heart of making change.”
When he met Paddy Rodgers, who has been CEO of Royal Museums Greenwich since 2019, they realised there was a synergy between Windrush and the Maritime Museum:
“We decided that we would develop a project over the next three to five years. We will be located at the Maritime Museum group within the Royal Maritime Museum itself until we get a separate space in probably about five years or so.”
Joint projects
This will, he explains, give the partners the time and opportunity to work on joint projects:
“We will be looking at decolonising the museum, obviously,” he says. “It’s about retelling British history so that it’s much more representative. Having the Maritime Museum and the Windrush Museum combined allows us to rewind and remix history in a way that is much more conducive to the general multicultural population of Britain. The Maritime Museum is very interested in doing that.”
Offering examples, he adds:
“If you take Nelson’s journeys, there is a place in Antigua called Nelson’s Dockyard. We are now talking to the Antiguan government about doing a conference exploring how we can retell that story.”
There is Port Royal in Jamaica, commonly referenced as ‘the wickedest city on Earth’, with its connotations of naval conquests, marauding pirates, looting, and destruction. He observes:
“We can retell that story about pirates and the British invasion of the seas. We can look at all these sub-narratives, and assess how to retell the maritime history.”
The Windrush Generation
A second project concerns the post-1947 epoch, and specifically concerns Windrush:
“It is about documenting Windrush experiences in a way where we can both develop a permanent collection and also have a series of temporary exhibitions and displays,” he says. “These are primarily around the notion of storytelling. The element that the Windrush Museum brings to the mix is the lived experience. This experience is crucial to the Windrush communities, and is why we’re making history.”
HMT Empire Windrush arrived at the Port of Tilbury on 21 June 1948. Its 492 passengers, Caribbean migrants, many of them veterans of the Second World War, disembarked a day later.
“They didn’t know where they were going. Yet they have made history in such a significant and powerful way,” Johnson comments:
“We are focusing on two areas, in short. One is retelling maritime history. The second is looking at the post-1947 experience of Windrush, coming up with different ways of expressing the experiences of the pioneers who were on the Empire Windrush, the ‘New Elders’, individuals who have grown up to replace the pioneers, and then the younger people, the millennials, Gen Z, and Gen Alpha. We are excited about Windrush futurism.”
An evolving space
He envisages the Windrush Museum not as a shrine, but as a dynamic, evolving space concerned with lived experience and storytelling.
Additionally:
“It is very important that we get to the point where we go beyond transience.”
He cites the Notting Hill Carnival in London as an example:
“It’s one of the biggest carnivals in the world, it’s diverse. Lots and lots of people come from all over the world and enjoy themselves. But once they’ve enjoyed themselves, what happens then? They leave.”
It is, in essence, ephemeral.
“It’s like a fashion show, in the sense that it’s fantastic and experiential while it’s there, but unless it’s documented, unless it derives assets, it’s just transient. The Windrush Museum is an institution that will gather many of these ephemeral experiences, and start to express them in a way that’s not just for the Windrush generation and their successors, but for Britain as a whole, as part of the British fabric.”
Education at the Windrush Museum
Education is core to Johnson’s philosophy:
“When I was discussing this venture with my colleagues at the National Maritime Museum, we wanted to embed positive learning into the mix,” he explains:
“Each one of the exhibitions will have education embedded into the experience. We will have schools coming to the exhibitions. We will have seminars, conferences, workshops, and situations where people can not only absorb the theory but also put it into practice. Learning through doing and reviewing is an essential way of understanding different cultural expressions and experiences.
“We are excited about all of this. Whether it’s master classes from some of the individuals from the Windrush experience, or younger people.”
One planned event is a youth takeover:
“Rather than us dictating to the youngsters, they are quite capable of telling us what they want to do.”
Interpreting the tangible and the intangible
In terms of interpretation, he adds:
“I look at it in two ways – the tangible, and the intangibles. I look at how we interpret the tangible elements of heritage. When it comes to cultural visualisation, in particular, I am also concerned about the intangibles. We don’t just look at the tangible aspects – the collections – of the museum experience.
“There is a whole curatorial philosophy and practice around the interpretation of collections. But my advice to my team is to explore the intangibles, too. Elements such as gesture, rhyme, and poetics all come out very strongly in the way that the history is expressed.”
The interpretation of intangibles is interesting conceptually, he points out:
“A practical example of this is the history of the reggae sound system. There is the object side. You can go to a blues dance, listen to the vinyl records, get down and swing and sway and have a great time. But the DJs, the vocalisation, the way that the music is being mixed, remixed and dubbed – all these are intangible. The tangible elements are working with the intangible elements to give this sound system experience that individuals are impacted by.”
Taking the Windrush Museum online
He adds a curatorial metaphor:
“If I go into a British museum, I’m looking at, pretty much, a linear or historical interpretation. There’s nothing wrong with that, but the nature of the Caribbean experience and how it links to the African experience has always been a shift between the polarities of the tangible and intangible, and all of the wonderful things that happen in between.
“Finding out ways of discussing, researching, and expressing intangible elements within the museum environment makes for some very interesting exhibitions.”
A further focus is on the online or virtual museum, comprising some of the many Windrush stories, extending the museum’s reach far beyond its walls. This will enable communication across the globe. He comments:
“There could be a series of online stories, and perhaps music, and installations.”
An international conference
From inception until this point, the project has taken a little over 18 months:
“My first team was brought together in fall 2021. I met the first cohort of very excited individuals, and then gave them the challenge: they came back with great feasibility, and based on that, I took over the chairmanship of the museum. We have been moving at colossal speed since then.”
In June, the two-day International Windrush Museum Conference took place in London. Johnson comments:
“I had colleagues come across from the Caribbean, from the University of West Indies. We had eight professors that came across, and they took part in a conference with colleagues here. When they left, they were saying, ‘When are we going to have the next one? It was amazing. Brilliant. Fantastic.’ Since that conference, from June to now, it has been another sprint, ending with this fantastic event at the House of Lords.”
Embedding diverse legacies into the British timeline
Stressing the significance of the Lords event, he adds:
“I was really taken that, with everything else that’s happening in the world today, I was in this space that’s often excluded too many of the people that were there, and that they had the opportunity to start thinking about documenting the legacy of the Windrush generation who brought so much to Britain, and have, to date, been excluded from society.
“People were very passionate about the fact that we are making history here. Not just history in the sense that we’re opening a museum, but in the sense that it really is a shift in the British timeline.”
In conclusion:
“The museum is a manifestation of my own historical, philosophical thoughts on what I call cultural visualisation; ideas of cultural entrepreneurship, and around tangible and intangible aspects of – particularly – Black cultural heritage, and the exchanges that happen when cultures intersect.
“We have to move things forward, particularly for the next generation, in terms of embedding diverse legacies into the British timeline. Britain, after all, is a diverse country.”
