Bristol will get a permanent monument to honour the victims of the transatlantic slave trade - and some kind of museum or ‘story-house’ to tell the story of Bristol’s involvement in the horrific chapter in history, as well as those stories of how enslaved people fought back to free themselves.
But the deputy mayor of Bristol said such a museum or venue should not be created ‘on the cheap’ and, in a sideswipe at plans to convert a derelict building in the Old City into a slavery and abolition museum and education centre, said the council would not do something like ‘opportunistically converting a derelict building’.
In the first official statement on an issue that has been bubbling in Bristol for decades, deputy mayor Cllr Asher Craig said council chiefs and members of the Legacy Steering Group she leads had been working quietly behind the scenes on where, when and how Bristol creates both a memorial and a museum that addresses the city’s slave-trading history.
