National Maritime Museum: Moments To Connect – The Spirit of Windrush
Insights from National Maritime Museum’s Windrush events which established social connection around a major national milestone.
Marking the 75th anniversary of Windrush, the National Maritime Museum partnered with the Caribbean Social Forum to deliver the Windrush 75 Festival in June 2023. This project was funded as part of Spirit of 2012’s ‘Moments to Connect’ initiative, which supported a series of projects to explore how major national events of 2023 can connect individuals and communities across social divides.
The project delivered a series of co-created activities and workshops, with performances culminating in a large-scale co-created event over two days at the National Maritime Museum. This included programmes of activity for schools and young people. The evaluation report presents learning on co-creating events and activity programmes, which can be adapted to other co-created events, projects and activities across sectors and scale. The findings support that events such as this can be effective in bringing individuals together, with 58% of survey respondents stating that they had met someone new at the Windrush 75 Festival. It also showed an increased understanding of the Windrush Generation, with 82% of survey respondents agreeing that they had better understanding of other people’s backgrounds as a result of the Festival.
Key learning
- The power of events to build social cohesion.
Events like Windrush 75 are effective at bringing different people together to build social cohesion. 81% said they had shared interests with people from other backgrounds.
- The power of events to build compassion.
Events like Windrush 75 take participants on a journey to discover more about the history and experiences of others and themselves. 86% of Festival participants said they had a better understanding of the Windrush Generation as a result of the Festival.
- Intergenerational schools activities creating shared understanding.
Participating school students had the opportunity to meet someone from the Windrush Generation, with 87% of students and 100% of teachers responding that they either ‘Agreed’ or ‘Strongly Agreed’ that they benefitted from meeting someone from the Windrush Generation.
- Co-creation for authenticity and impact.
The Windrush 75 Festival and Project presented a distributed model of co-creation, whereby co-creation happened at many different stages of the development and delivery of the Festival and Project. For participants and co-creation partners alike, the cocreation behind the Festival and Project gave a level of authenticity to both. This is vital for an event that explores the history and experiences of individuals and communities who have been marginalised or discriminated against.
- Collecting & Curating for future generations.
The urgency to collect the stories and histories of the Windrush Generation was felt by many who attended the Windrush 75 Festival. At 75 years since the Empire Windrush arrived at Tilbury Dock, soon the unrecorded experiences of those who travelled on the Empire Windrush and contemporary ships and planes, as well as their immediate descendants, will be lost.
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