The Postal Museum has been nominated for a Museum Association Museums Change Lives award

Voices of Resistance: Slavery and Post in the Caribbean has been recognised with a nomination for a Museums Association Museums Change Lives Award in the Equitable Partnerships category.

The Museums Change Lives Awards recognises outstanding work by UK museums delivering social impact. The Equitable Partnership Award celebrates projects in which museums and community partners work together equitably to achieve shared goals. 

Since 2019, we have worked with African Caribbean community partners and academics to research and co-produce an exhibition exploring the links between The Postal Museum’s collections and transatlantic slavery. We worked collaboratively to address traditional power imbalances and deepen our understanding of the collection. Shared planning and decision making was embedded into the whole process, starting with the research. Academic Dr Anyaa Anim-Addo supported and challenged us to address the barriers in finding and surfacing African Caribbean experiences within our archive. Reading our files ‘against the grain’ enabled us to amplify voices traditionally silenced and under-represented in our collections.  

Academic partner Dr Anyaa Anim Addo says: 

From the outset of this project, I was struck by the fact that The Postal Museum was thoroughly committed to partnership. This commitment underpinned a sensitive and rewarding collaborative process, enabled a re-examination of the archive and made space for learning. Through co-curation, stories from the past have been brought into resonance with the present moment and partnerships have allowed for vitally important dialogue between places with connected histories. 

Founder of Director of Museum of Colour, Samenua Sesher OBE says:

The care and attention to understanding the context of the work being explored in this exhibition has made it a rare and satisfying experience.

Miles Greenwood, Lead Curator at the International Slavery Museum says:

It was a privilege to be asked to provide comments on the exhibition text. The Postal Museum clearly undertook a thoughtful and rigorous process to presenting these stories. It’s important that museums that aren’t exclusively dedicated to slavery and colonialism, find ways of presenting these topics to their audiences. I was particularly impressed with how the exhibition encouraged visitors to actively and critically interrogate collections.

Through researching the movement of mail between Britain and the Caribbean in the 1800s, our focus shifted to St. Thomas. Postal steamships stopped on the island and enslaved people were exploited to re-coal ships. To decentre the museum voice, we worked with partners in London and St. Thomas, one of the US Virgin Islands, who live with the legacy of the operation or have cultural connections to the Caribbean. They shaped the approach from the outset, addressed gaps in the historical record, and used the space to platform their work and experiences.  

Our partners in St. Thomas, Dollar fo’ Dollar, celebrate the triumphs of the islands coal workers. Dollar fo’ Dollar co-curated significant parts of the exhibition through shaping themes, selecting display objects, loaning items, text writing, and creating films. 

We worked with African, Caribbean and Black diaspora community groups in London to co-produce creative responses for display. A group from Royal Mail created a reimagined map, and the Caribbean Social Forum recreated coal baskets, addressing gaps in the historical record. Our partners felt heard, valued, and involved in shared decision making. 

Working in partnership has enabled us to centre the experiences of African Caribbean people and amplify voices traditionally silenced and under-represented in museum collections.   

This year’s awards will take place at Sain Ffagan Amgueddfa Werin Cymru – St Fagans National Museum of History, Cardiff on Tuesday 7 October 2025 as part of the Museums Association’s annual conference.