From Lament to Action

From Lament to Action - A Bishop’s Study Day for Black History Month 2024

Tuesday 8 October 9.30am – 1pm at Over Community Centre

16 The Doles, Over, Cambs, CB24 5NW

Anyone wanting to stay on to chat to the speakers/other attendees afterwards is welcome to bring their own lunch or buy lunch at the onsite café. The venue is booked until 2pm

Twice since 2021, Ely Diocese has hosted ‘Breaking the Silence’, a theatrical performance that explores the historic links between churches and British slavery and abolition in our region. The experience of those who performed and received it is that engaging with this complicated history can have a restorative, healing and beneficial impact on local communities and helps to foster greater compassion, understanding, and inclusivity, with the church as the central site for such work to take place.   

Led by Holly Maples and Inge Dornan, co-creators of ‘Breaking the Silence’ and Victoria Avery, lead curator at Cambridge’s Fitzwilliam Museum, this Bishop’s Study Day will alert us to opportunities for ongoing learning and collaboration within our Diocese and allow us to think together about how we might encourage dialogue across and between communities; encourage openness to the diverse experiences of those within our communities; promote inclusivity by considering projects to involve non-traditional congregants; and engage with local schools and community groups. 

Booking Required

Please reserve your place here - https://elydatabase.org/events/mission_ministry

Speakers’ biographies

• Dr. Victoria Avery is Keeper of European Sculpture and Decorative Arts at the Fitzwilliam Museum and Professor of European Sculpture at Cambridge University. Having been co-curator of Black Atlantic: Power, People, Resistance (Sept 2023-Jan 2024), Vicky is now Lead Curator of the Fitzwilliam Museum’s second Legacies-themed exhibition, provisionally titled, Rise up! Resistance, Revolution, Abolition (Fitzwilliam Museum, 21 February – 1 June 2025). Her research into the presence of historic key Black figures in Cambridge, such as Olaudah Equiano and George Bridgtower, is ongoing.
• Dr Inge Dornan is a Reader in Race and Gender History at Brunel University London. She was awarded an MPhil and PhD from Girton College, Cambridge, and later became Visiting and Associate Fellow of the Rothermere American Institute, Oxford, and Visiting Fellow of Mansfield College, Oxford. Her research focuses on the British slave trade and slavery in North America and the British Caribbean, with a particular interest in the experiences of women and children in slavery. She is currently undertaking a research project on the public campaigns to address the legacies of the slave trade and slavery in Britain today.  Inge has a strong commitment to public engagement and joined forces with Professor Holly Maples to produce a series of award-winning public events on "Unlocking the Secrets of Slavery" for the UK Being Human Festival of Humanities in 2019. This included a heritage production, "Breaking the Silence", on British abolition, which has since undertaken two tours of the UK, including most recently to Cambridgeshire in 2024.    
• Dr Holly Maples is a cultural historian, theatre maker, educator and scholar with an expertise in heritage performance and UK arts industry research. She is Professor of Theatre at East 15 School of Acting, University of Essex. She has created performances and immersive experiences for heritage and museum sites in the UK, Ireland and the US. From 2017-2020 Dr Maples acted as Drama lead on Norfolk heritage projects with the Paston Footprints, a festival celebrating the Early Modern Paston Letters. She has also created projects for the Norwich Castle Museum Viking: Discover the Legend exhibition. In Hillingdon, Middlesex, she created a site specific heritage performance exploring the 18th century slave trade and abolitionist movement for the Being Human festival in 2019 and on Arts Council funded tours across the UK in 2021 & 2024. She is a co-investigator on a US/UK project on digital innovation for the heritage industry National Endowment for Humanities and Arts and Humanities Research Council where she is creating two experiences merging Augmented Reality with live theatre to educate audiences on the 18th century slave trade for English Heritage Marble Hill and Historic Deerfield in the United States. She has won Excellence in Research Impact awards at both Brunel University and the University of Essex.