Reflections on the workshops, by David Kwao Fianko-Williams

[In this post, David Kwao Fianko-Williams, one of our project participants, shares some personal reflections on the workshop series of the Decolonising Memory: Digital Bodies in Movement Project which ran from November 2021 to May 2022]

6th November 2021 

Memory and Transatlantic Enslavement

The session today, has made me ponder about memory and its intrinsic fluidity.  As Dr Jessica Moody quoted from Toni Morrison’s, The site of memory. Memory is like “water”, and “emotional memory [is like] ‘flooding’”. These words really resonated with me as memory should be free and ever flowing like “water”, not controlled, distorted, or sanitised. Which is why it is important that we collectively work together to decolonise our thought processes regarding this history. So that our memories of this history are in truth, un-sanitised, reflecting the historical realities of the histories of transatlantic enslavement.

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BLOG: Dance, history and movement as co-produced research

Reflections on the workshop series. By Jessica Moody (Senior Lecturer in Public History, University of Bristol)

Alas, we have come to the end of our workshop series for the Decolonising Memory: Digital Bodies in Movement project! As this marks the end of the first phase of our project, I thought I’d share some personal reflections on the workshops we held over the last 7 months. We first advertised for participants in October 2021 through this website, social media, press releases, local publications, local radio and word of mouth and held an online information event. Our first workshop was November 6th 2021 and these ran every first Saturday of the month thereafter until May 7th. We held these workshops hybrid (both online and offline) – at the Malcolm X Centre in St Paul’s, and online via zoom for those who couldn’t join in person (with all participants being able to hear and see each other). We also held monthly online ‘mid-point’ meetings on zoom where we carried on the conversations from the workshops and undertook other exercises and activities to develop ideas.

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