On August 23rd 2022, we performed our memorial dance on College Green at 6pm outside the ‘Colston Window’ of Bristol Cathedral. Parts of that window have been removed by the Cathedral because of their celebration of Edward Colston. We had a few new people who hadn’t performed the dance before join us, which was wonderful. August 23rd is an important day in the calendar of memory work around enslavement as it is the day designated by UNESCO as the Day of Remembrance of the Transatlantic Trade in Enslaved Africans and its Abolition. You can read Jessica’s reflections on this as a Memorial Day HERE.
Our performance took place on College Green, which is also an important site of protest and activism in the city of Bristol, and in the week that Bristol Cathedral opened a new exhibition, ‘All God’s Children’ exploring the Cathedral’s connections to histories of enslavement. If you go into the cathedral you can learn about the connections between people commemorated in the building and their connections to this history.
Before our performance, Cleo offered some words of libation, explaining why we were there, the significance of the day and the meaning of the dance as memorial; to honour and celebrate the ancestors, to remember and to atone in this space.
Earlier in the day we held two workshops teaching the dance to anyone who wanted to learn it, and we held these in the Chapter House – a room with intricate ceiling decorations inspired by Moorish architecture
To mark the day and this performance, Kwesi and The Cultural Assembly also released a new Instagram filter as a teaser of some of the content from our forthcoming augmented reality app. To view this, visit Bristol cathedral and hold you phone up to the front using the filter on our Instagram page: @decolonisingmemory_bristol. Remember to turn the sound up!
We hope to keep performing the dance as an act of memorial at signifiant times and events, watch this space for news of future performances and for updates on the release of the app.