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Goldsmiths launches Windrush exhibition

REFLECTING: Windrush: Arrival 1948 exhibition at Goldsmiths, University of London

GOLDSMITHS have launched an exhibition, which recreates and displays the Windrush passenger landing cards destroyed by the Home Office in 2010.

Windrush: Arrival 1948 includes images, maps and a new transcription of the passenger list held at The National Archives, which has been used to make 1,027 individual landing cards.

The idea for the exhibit was conceived and curated by Dr John Price, Head of the Department of History at Goldsmiths, in collaboration with Will Cenci, Public Engagement Manager.

Dr Price said: “The exhibition seeks to ask questions, rather than present answers. We want it to act as a starting point for debate, rather than consolidating consensus, and to provide a wider viewpoint on Windrush, rather than retracing familiar steps.

“Media attention at the time focussed on the ‘500 Jamaican men, all of whom were eager to work in Britain’ while largely overlooking the other 527 passengers. Since then, there’s been a tendency to depict Windrush as the origin of settled black communities in Britain and to exemplify it as a seminal moment in black British history and identity. As a result, the long and varied histories of persons of African origin and descent in Britain can become overshadowed, overlooked and marginalised by this single event.”

The exhibition also features a mid-century Caribbean front room installation curated by Goldsmiths designer and lecturer Rose Sinclair, and audio arrival stories recorded at Goldsmiths in October 2018.

Windrush: Arrival 1948 is installed in the Kingsway Corridor, Richard Hoggart Building, Goldsmiths, University of London, Lewisham Way, London SE14 6NW

Visit between 9am – 9pm, Monday-Sunday, until 13 February 2019.

Entry is free.

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