By KLTV Newsdesk –

A Manchester Metropolitan University academic has been using the Saltaire Festival to encourage visitors to think again about the Leeds and Liverpool Canal and its links to enslavement.

Professor Jodie Matthews set up her stall, ‘From the Americas to Yorkshire: Cotton Money and Enslavement’, beside the canal in Saltaire. It is the result of several months of work with members of the Saltaire History Club.

She said the work was funded by the British Academy. The aim is to test ways of talking in public about an emotive subject that not everyone feels comfortable discussing.

“What does it mean to have a canal encounter, to encounter histories of enslavement in the canal space?” she said.

Coal, cotton and sugar

Visitors to the stall were shown a map of the world, a model canal boat and examples of goods carried on the canal, including coal, cotton and sugar. They were then asked to think about where those goods came from.

People responded in different ways. Some had never thought about canal history before. Others knew the canal well but had not made the transatlantic connection.

Visitors came from further afield too, including America and Denmark. One woman who lives on a canal boat compared how thoroughly the Netherlands teaches its colonial history with how rarely those conversations happen in UK education.

‘A lot of hope’

Professor Matthews said the response had left her optimistic.

“It’s a dark history. It’s an uncomfortable history. But being here today, I feel energised because people are interested in it. They’re enthused by it. And it gives me a lot of hope that we can rethink the ways that we explore these spaces.”

She now hopes to take the work to other canals across West Yorkshire and Lancashire, working with local canal communities to develop ways of engaging with this history.