Learning on ScreenForward to Freedom
Poster advertising the concert held at Wembley Stadium on 11 June 1988 as part of the AAM’s ‘Nelson Mandela: Freedom at 70’ campaign. The poster was one of six specially commissioned from leading graphic artists. The concert was attended by a capacity audience of 72,000 and broadcast to 63 countries with a potential audience of a billion people. Oliver Tambo was the guest of honour and Stevie Wonder, Whitney and Sting were among the performers. (Date: 1988 Anti-Apartheid Movement)
The project created an oral history archive to add a new dimension to the written records. Volunteers conducted 41 new interviews, and clips and transcripts of these were uploaded onto the website. The Museum of London helped in the digitisation of earlier taped interviews; some of them conducted in 2000 by Swedish sociologist Håkan Thörn for his book ‘Anti-Apartheid and the Emergence of a Global Civil Society’. Interviewees include key AAM staff members like Mike Terry and Ethel de Keyser, leading trade unionists like Jack Jones and Ron Todd, founders of partner organisations such as End Loans to Southern Africa’s Rev David Haslam and grassroots activists from former anti-apartheid local groups, recounting the experiences of some of the hundreds of thousands of people who took part in anti-apartheid campaigns.
Another part of the project was the creation of a twenty-two-board pop-up exhibition, available for loan to schools, colleges, libraries and community organisations. This went on display for the first time at a very successful project launch at the South African High Commission in March 2014 and has since been shown at TUC Congress House, Unison’s new headquarters building and at conferences in London and Oxford. During Black History Month 2014 in October it will go on show in Islington, Camden and Norwich.
Project learning resources so far consist of an online education pack designed for the Key Stage 3 citizenship curriculum. It is planned to pilot this in schools in the autumn term. We are keen to work with educators in other curriculum areas and other settings like adult education and trade union courses to draw on the website to create more learning resources.
One of the key issues facing any project like ours is how to make it sustainable and on-going when the initial cash resources have run out and the project manager moves on. The Forward to Freedom project has left the AAM Archives Committee reinvigorated by the enthusiasm of a new generation of activists keen to use the experience of the past to inform the campaigns of the future. Having traversed a steep learning curve and with volunteer support, we plan to maintain and add to the website for an initial ten-year period and to build on the Key Stage 3 education pack to create new educational materials.
Christabel Gurney
