Back to Blantyre

I was out at Rutherglen yesterday leading a text-training session for a team of staff and volunteers from the David Livingstone Birthplace Project. This was with the aim of kick-starting our process to write fresh and engaging content for the new museum.

I will be working in an editorial and interpretion advisory capacity with the team over the next few months. So far I’ve been developing editorial guidelines, reading biographies and getting to grips with the museum plans.

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Here’s a case of just some of the fascinating objects which are likely to feature in the new museum. It includes one of David Livingstone’s field diaries in which he directly observed hundreds of slaves being massacred. His reports back in the UK assisted with the abolition of the East African Slave Trade.  The case featured in ‘A New Light on Livingstone’ – a temporary exhibition that I worked on a few years back while still working for NTS.

The project involves a major refurbishment of the David Livingstone Centre at Blantyre – where the famous explorer spent his early years. It’s an exciting opportunity to re-tell this extraordinary life story to contemporary audiences.

His story touches on various emotive and important global issues such as slavery, colonialism, and cultural imperialism. We will be choosing our words to provoke reflection and explore, rather than to shy away from some of these more controversial topics and hope that visitors will appreciate this approach.

Read about the project  here.

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