Curated by Predrag Pajdic, BOUND was an exhibition of works by international contemporary artists representing personal perspectives on the physical and psychological impact of slavery on humanity, in historical and modern contexts. BOUND incorporated archival material, conceptual work, photography, video, live art performance, interventions and installations. It was a partnership project between the Open Eye Gallery, FACT (Foundation for Art and Creative Technology) and Tate Liverpool. The exhibition opened at Open Eye Gallery and then ran at various venues across Liverpool. Associated events included open table discussions, talks and film screenings.

Breaking the Chains opened at the British Empire and Commonwealth Museum to coincide with the bicentenary, and told the story of the British transatlantic slave trade and its abolition. Developed in partnership with Bristol City Council's Museums, Galleries and Archives' Service, the exhibition used artefacts, film and testimony to challenge perceptions about Britain's involvement in the slave trade and its legacy today. It featured a multimedia gallery of digital memories and feelings on the contemporary legacies of the slave trade; interactive sound stations to see and hear personal testimonies and the power of black music; and the ‘Me deya’ gallery, led by Firstborn Creatives, a collection of work from artists and communities who wished to share their creative pieces about the legacies of the slave trade. Associated events included African music for children, community dance events and public debates.

As part of the Abolition 200 programme, the Bristol 1807 project set out to explore the lives of ordinary Bristolians in 1807. An exhibition in the Central Library, and a series of touring exhibitions in Bristol's libraries and community centres explored society, culture, trade and travel in 19th century Bristol, a city and port with many ties to transatlantic slavery. The project collaborated with local schools to provide creative art workshops for children around themes of slavery and freedom. There were also 'Treasures in Store' hands-on sessions with rare library artefacts concerned with the period of abolition including books, newspapers and everyday objects. A book emerging from the project, 'Bristol in 1807: Impressions of the City at the Time of Abolition' by Anthony Beeson, was published in 2009.

‘Bromley’s Hidden History’ was led by Bromley Museum, with assistance from Bromley Local Studies and Archives. A touring exhibition, education pack, programme of events and web resources were produced to highlight Bromley’s connections with slavery and abolition. Bromley slave owners and those with capital invested in the Caribbean were highlighted, alongside the influence of William Pitt (who lived at Holwood House) and his political circle in the abolitionist campaign. Consideration was also given to historical black figures living in the borough, such as the actor Ira Aldridge.

This haunting exhibition documented the exploitation and brutality experienced by Congolese people under the control of Leopold II of Belgium in the 1900s. The photographs, by missionary Alice Seeley Harris, were at the time a radical and significant shift in the representation and understanding of the impact of colonial violence in the Congo, and exposed the deep-rooted hypocrisy of so called 'colonial benevolence' which cost the lives of millions of Congolese. The campaign led to public pressure and international scrutiny of Leopold’s administration, which came to an end in 1909.

The legacy of Belgian violence and exploitation would tragically re-emerge years later after the Congo gained independence in 1960, with the murder of the country’s first legally elected Prime Minister, Patrice Lumumba.

European exploitation of the Congolese people and resources has shaped the country's recent history and the effects are still evident today.

This exhibition was developed in partnership with Autograph ABP and Anti-Slavery International.

Situated in Winnipeg, at the heart of the Canadian Prairies, the Canadian Museum for Human Rights is the first museum in the world solely dedicated to the past, present and future of human rights. The museum aims to create inspiring interactive experiences for its visitors in order to equip them with the tools needed to make a difference in the lives of others. It is the first museum in nearly five decades to be built outside Canada's National Capital Region, with funding from the Canadian government, after being established by legislative amendments to the Museums Act in 2008. The museum's building was purpose-built, designed to reflect the themes of the museum in the external construction, with a Hall of Hope built in luminous alabaster and outside glass wings surrounding the building represent a dove as a symbol of peace.

The Canadian Museum for Human Rights has ten core galleries as well as two spaces for temporary or travelling exhibitions. All of the displays within the museum feature diverse aspects of human rights. These include: a discursive introductory display about what human rights are, a gallery that explores the perspectives of indigenous Canadian people, and an exhibition that focusses on the stories of Canadian individuals or groups that have had their own 'journeys' with human rights challenges. Another exhibition features an overview of Canada's legal stance on human rights. Other galleries explore human rights from a more global perspective, looking at the Holocaust, other instances of genocide around the world and 'Turning Points' that have marked key changes in international human rights policy. The later galleries on the visitor route explore human rights in the present and their potential in the future, challenging visitors to take action and inspire change. All of these galleries feature the use of digital interactives, film and audio presented from lots of different perspectives, often providing the visitor an opportunity to actively participate with the theme of the exhibition. Built without a collection, the museum has filled its galleries with objects on loan from organisations around the world, both in Canada and abroad. They also have objects donated to them from the people and groups the galleries represent. The museum also has a Tower of Hope that visitors can go up, with views over the city, and an indoor garden of reflection.

The Transatlantic Slave Trade is cited as the first instance of genocide in world history in the 'Breaking the Silence' gallery which explores the role of secrecy and denial in the persecution of genocide and what happened when people spoke out or offered resistance. The centre-piece of the gallery is an interactive table that shows instances of genocide, both through time and across the world, alongside related documents and images. The 'Canadian Journeys' gallery incorporates the narrative of enslaved Africans using the Underground Railroad to escape to freedom in Canada. There are also narratives of more contemporary forms of slavery and human trafficking. Narratives of enslavement have also featured in public programmes at the museum.

Cape Coast Castle is one of around forty ‘slave castles’ built by European traders on the coast of West Africa and used to hold enslaved Africans prior to their being transported to the Americas or the Caribbean. The first timber construction on the site was erected in 1653 for the Swedish Africa Company named Carolusborg. It was later rebuilt in stone. In April 1663 the ‘Swedish Gold Coast’ was seized by the Danes and integrated into the ‘Danish Gold Coast’. In 1664 it was conquered by the British. Originally used for trade in timber and gold, the castle was later used in the transatlantic slave trade. In the late 18th century it was rebuilt and used as the seat of the colonial Government of the British Gold Coast in 1844. In 1957, when Ghana became independent, the site came under the care of the Ghana Museums and Monuments Board, and was restored for public access in the 1990s. The museum offers guided tours, as well as permitting tours orchestrated by freelance tour guides. There is also a library and a gift shop, featuring traditional Ghanaian arts and crafts, on site.

The main aim of the museum is to act as a monument to those taken from Africa and enslaved into the system of Transatlantic Slavery. It features both archaeological and ethnographic collections on displays, within the rooms of the castle. Throughout, there are also a number of contemporary sculptures depicting the heads of victims of the slave trade. Visitors tour through the castle, encountering the rooms in which the enslaved were held, with guides providing further information about the conditions and experiences those thousands of Africans faced.

Exploring the role of women and food from the Congo basin in the past and today, MAA’s first exhibition in our rebranded spotlight gallery is co-curated with the Congo Great Lakes Initiative.

The museum was established by Dr. Charles Wright, an obstetrician and gynaecologist who envisioned an institution to preserve Black history after visiting a memorial to Danish World War II heroes in Denmark. It opened in 1965 as Detroit’s first international Afro-American museum. After expansions in 1978 and 1992, the museum was finally named the Charles H. Wright museum after its founder in 1998. It has since received monetary support from individuals, foundations, corporations, and government sources. The mission statement of the museum is to open minds and change lives through the exploration and celebration of African American history and culture.

Current exhibitions on display in the museum include a large 22,000 square-foot exhibition that examines Ancient and Early Modern African history and the experiences of the enslaved during the Middle Passage, alongside the experiences of those who resisted the horrors of bondage and self-emancipation. Throughout this exhibition, entitled ‘And Still We Rise: Our Journey Through African American History and Culture,’ there is a clear emphasis on the efforts of the everyday African American people who built families, businesses, educational institutions, and civic organisations in Detroit, past and present. The museum also offers exhibitions that look at the contributions of African Americans in science and technology, as well as showcasing examples of stained glass art by Samuel A. Hodge.

The museum has a busy events programme that includes community health and fitness programs, as well as lectures and education sessions for both children and adults. There are group tours for all ages, as well as led workshops for pre-school children. All of these workshops aim to highlight the lessons portrayed in the ‘And We Rise’ exhibition, prompting reflection and discussion from visitors.

An exhibition at the Royal Naval Museum at Portsmouth Historic Dockyard explored the role of the Royal Navy squadron established after 1807 to patrol the West African coast and suppress the transatlantic slave trade. Using illustrations, contemporary accounts and original diaries of Royal Navy personnel, the exhibition examined key aspects of the campaign against Atlantic slave traders. It also looked at the Royal Navy's efforts against human trafficking and in the pursuance of humanitarian rights today. There was an accompanying programme of schools workshops and community events. Two specially produced films discussed the legacy of the squadron's work and recreated the abolition debates of the time.

Bury Archives and Museum collaborated on an exhibition based on the journals, letters and other papers of John Hutchinson. The Hutchinson family's cotton spinning business had links to slavery in the United States: in 1848, John Hutchinson travelled to America to buy cotton produced by slaves. The exhibition at Bury Art Gallery featured archives, museum objects and paintings that put the papers into a social context. Cotton Threads went on tour to branch libraries, where talks and family workshops explored family histories and the cotton business. Volunteers assisted in conserving, cataloguing and digitising the Hutchinson papers, which were made available online. Primary school pupils took part in workshops held in the exhibition and a resource pack for secondary schools was produced with local teachers (available to download from the Cotton Threads website).

Bishop’s Stortford was the birthplace of the Victorian financier and imperialist Cecil Rhodes. To commemorate the bicentenary of the Abolition Act, Bishop's Stortford Museum and Rhodes Art Complex explored Britain’s imperial ambitions in the ‘Coveting Africa’ exhibition. The museum holds much material from Southern Africa, Zimbabwe, Zambia and Botswana: areas where British colonialism and imperialism in Africa was focused in the nineteenth century. Through a year-long programme of arts events, this project discussed the relationship between Britain and Africa, and explored British attitudes to African peoples. Events included workshops by the London School of Capoeira.

The Cowper & Newton Museum is a very small, local museum managed by a charitable trust and staffed predominantly by volunteers. The museum is situated in Orchard House, the home of poet and author William Cowper between 1768 to 1786. Since it opened in 1900, the museum has focussed on telling the story of Cowper’s life in the thriving Georgian market town of Olney, Buckinghamshire. The museum also examines Cowper's relationship with his friend and neighbour, slave-trader turned ordained priest and abolitionist, Reverend John Newton.

The museum’s mission is for visitors to ‘relive Georgian life in Olney.’ Using items of personal collections relating to both of the museum’s namesakes, the displays bring the house to life in the form of period room settings combined with display cases and interpretive panels. Both Cowper and Newton published writings against the slave trade and corresponded with other abolitionists, including William Wilberforce. The displays provide some context on the slave trade before outlining Cowper and Newton’s involvement in abolition. This is represented through a range of objects including archive material, portraits and furniture both from the museum’s collection, and loaned pieces from Wilberforce House Museum, Hull.

As well as being a theme which runs throughout the whole museum, with Cowper’s ‘The Negro’s Complaint’ on display in the Georgian History Room for instance, there is one particular room on the first floor of the house which focuses predominantly on the slave trade and abolition. Like most of the museums analysed here, the interpretive panels in this display were created using funds made available for the bicentenary in 2007.

2007 saw a number of different projects taking place at Harewood House in West Yorkshire, home of the Lascelles family. The bicentenary was used as an opportunity to explore the family connections with the transatlantic slave trade and the sugar plantations of the West Indies.

The art installation Crop Over by British Afro-Caribbean artist Sonia Boyce was shown in the public galleries at Harewood House throughout 2007. Crop Over is a Barbadian festival which has evolved from a celebration by plantation slaves of the end of the sugar crop. Sonia Boyce's two-screen film visually depicts the traditions, histories and cultural practices of this festival, which culminates with a carnivalesque parade known as Kadooment. It also responds to the history of Harewood House. The Lascelles family association with Barbados began in the 17th century when Edward Lascelles and his son Daniel were based in Bridgetown, Barbados.

Inspired by the bicentenary, the Distorted Image exhibition at Hereford Cathedral explored how distorted perceptions throughout history have resulted in prejudice, discrimination and enslavement. Incomplete or misleading images of human beings, who are black or female or in some way considered 'other', have resulted in unjust behaviour against them, particularly in the case of restricted legal and political rights. Alongside the example of slavery, this exhibition also looked at the invariably inferior position of women within church teaching. Distorted Image was part of the ongoing Mappa Mundi and Chained Library exhibition. The Hereford Mappa Mundi is a 13th century map featuring drawings of the history of humankind and the natural world, which records how medieval scholars interpreted the world in spiritual as well as geographical terms.

DEED (Development Education in Dorset) works within the community to develop understanding of global education and cultural diversity. The charity produced and made available to hire the Dorset's Hidden Histories touring exhibition, which explored 400 years of the stories of people with African and Caribbean heritage across Dorset, Bournemouth and Poole. Many Dorset families were involved in slavery, either owning or trading in African slaves, and Black people were brought to Dorset by slave traders to live as servants in the large country houses. The exhibition, which is still available to borrow, also includes details of African American GIs on Poole Quay, a freed enslaved American living in Bournemouth, and Belle Davis, the African-American singer and dancer who performed in Weymouth in 1917. The organisation worked with Louisa Adjoa Parker, a local poet and black history researcher, to provide creative writing workshops to explore the exhibition. An accompanying booklet, written by Parker, can be purchased from DEED.

An exhibition exploring the connections between the Scottish region of Dumfries and Galloway and the transatlantic slave trade toured Dumfries Museum, the Stewartry Museum in Kirkcudbright and Stranraer Museum. At each venue, the exhibition was accompanied by displays of material and a lecture. The catalogue of new research to supplement the exhibition by Frances Wilkins set out to correct misunderstandings about the role of people from the region in the transatlantic slave trade, to prove a history of connections independent of Glasgow or anywhere else. Evidence suggests that men from smaller towns such as Dumfries and Kirkcudbright were involved in the transatlantic slave trade as merchants, slave traders or plantation owners. For example, in the late 18th century, plantation supplies were sent from Kirkcudbright to the island of Grenada; the vessels returned with rum, sugar, and cotton wool.

Elim Heritage Centre was opened in 2009 in the Moravian mission village of Elim. Situated in the former mission store, it relies on funding from a grant by SAN Parks which permits a modest salary for its sole member of staff. Elim was established in 1824 and, in common with other mission stations in the area, saw an influx of newly freed people following the end of the post-abolition apprenticeship period in 1838. The centenary of the ending of the apprenticeship period in 1938 was marked in Elim by a monument situated across the road from the Moravian Mission Church. A feasibility study for an Elim offshoot of UNESCO’s Cape leg of its Slave Route project in the late 1990s revealed that many Elim residents were unaware about their slave heritage. Although the feasibility study did not amount to a longer-term UNESCO project, the undertaking did encourage interest in slave history in Elim. The 1938 monument was rededicated in 2004, and the Heritage Centre’s foundation can be traced to the feasibility study. As well as featuring as a community repository including donated trade and home objects, photographs, and clothing, its collections include a series of display panels created by the Slave Route feasibility study.

The Heritage Centre’s displays are modest and consist mainly of photographs pinned to display boards. There is little on slavery itself, although one primarily photographic panel shows a clear pride in the 1938 memorial and the way in which it has functioned as a form of remembering slavery over time in Elim. Reference is made to 1 December Emancipation Day as a way of reconnecting with ancestors. Another display details the genealogical origins of Elim, giving the names of early settlers among whom formerly enslaved people are clearly evident. The Slave Route display panels are not on open display. Indeed, it is the behind the scenes work of the curator where the Heritage Centre’s connections with slavery become more apparent. It holds substantial church records, and the curator assists with genealogical enquiries from around the world, including from people researching their slave ancestry.

An exhibition to mark the bicentenary was developed by Enfield Museum Service in partnership with the British Museum and Enfield Racial Equality Council. The exhibition looked at West African culture, the development of the local African community, the links between the transatlantic slave trade and Enfield, wealthy landowners and Quaker abolitionists who lived in the area. Free family days held during school vacations offered traditional Ghanaian story-telling, dancing and drumming, crafts and object handling. Living History Days gave visitors the opportunity to meet actors portraying William Wilberforce and Olaudah Equiano. School workshops included a drama session and performance about a runaway slave developed from material from Lambeth Archive. The museum service also produced a book, edited by Valerie Munday, which explored further the links between Enfield and the slave trade. The book was sent to all schools in the borough, and formed the basis of a teaching resource aimed at Key Stages 2 and 3. Loan boxes and handling collections provided by the museum service include Ghanaian artefacts and items relating to the slave trade. In 2011, Enfield Racial Equality Council unveiled a plaque to commemorate abolition at the Enfield Civic Centre.

Everywhere in Chains was an umbrella project created for the bicentenary commemorations in 2007, by a collaboration between Amgueddfa Cymru - National Museum Wales, the National Library of Wales, University of Wales, Bangor and CyMAL: Museum Archives and Libraries Wales (part of the Welsh Assembly Government). An exhibition explored Welsh involvement in slavery, especially focusing on the transatlantic slave trade and its abolition, the Black presence in Wales, and legacies of slavery. This was shown at the National Waterfront Museum in Swansea from May to November 2007 before touring to Wrexham County Borough Museum. The touring version of the exhibition was funded by the Welsh Assembly Government. The exhibition in Wrexham included discussion of the painting 'A Negro Coachboy', thought to commemorate a black servant of John Meller, owner of the Erddig estate in the 18th century.

Alongside the exhibition, the Everywhere in Chains programme also included lectures, formal learning activities and performances. An educational pack was produced by CyMAL and distributed to every school in Wales in 2009-2010. A community project created a forum in which participants from many cultural backgrounds could voice their ideas about enslavement. The Everywhere in Chains Community Heritage Toolkit captured the learning from this project. The toolkit, launched in 2009, was produced to help individuals, groups and organisations to work with culture and heritage providers to undertake projects focused on the role of Wales in the transatlantic slave trade and issues of modern slavery.