Community cohesion
Moments To Connect
Nationwide
Moments to Connect
The Spirit of Windrush
This project is now closed
Participatory community activities and an event to mark the 75th anniversary of the arrival of HMT Empire Windrush.
Project information
£47,060
Total Spirit grant
March 2023 – March 2024
Project duration
National Maritime Museum (part of Royal Museums Greenwich)
Grantee organisation
The Spirit of Windrush was a series of participatory activities and a large-scale event to mark the 75th anniversary of the arrival of HMT Empire Windrush.
Delivered in partnership between National Maritime Museum and the Greenwich Caribbean Social Forum, the project explored how this shared history has shaped British society today through the eyes of lived experience and through descendants of the Windrush generation.
A series of co-created activities including an inter-schools choir, schools workshop, reminiscence sessions, games, and interactive performances culminated in a large-scale event over two days at the National Maritime Museum.
The aim was to provide a platform for compassion and understanding between people with different cultural backgrounds by fostering a shared understanding of this history, challenges the Windrush generation face(d) and challenges facing children/young people of colour today. National Maritime Museum brought lived experience to the fore in a national museum, ensuring the stories are shared rather than lost, and embedded within the core remit of the Museum’s charitable purpose.
I like to be here, you smell the food, the music. There’s a connection there, even if you don’t know each other.
Festival visitor
Project aims
- Bring people from different backgrounds together
- Celebrate and recognise the contributions the Windrush Generation, their descendants and the wider British Caribbean community have made to Britain
- Build a deeper understanding of and compassion for the challenges the Windrush generation faced on arrival to the UK, and since.
- Develop and test a model to share across sectors on how to bring together communities to mark significant cultural events through co-creation.
- Share learning and build understanding between generations.
- Build confidence and resources of schools to address inclusive and hidden histories, including Windrush as a major event for study
- Document and chart the experiences of the Windrush generation.
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