Barbados to Create ‘Heritage District’ to Remember Victims of Slavery
by Karen Rollins Dec 6, 2021
Barbados is set to establish a state-of-the-art ‘Heritage District’ at Newton Plantation, Christ Church, to remember and honour the transatlantic slave trade victims.
Prime Minister Mia Mottley outlined her government’s plans for the ambitious ‘Reclaiming Our Atlantic Destiny (ROAD)’ project during a press conference on Friday 3 December.
She described the initiative as “a moral imperative but equally an economic necessity” for the island.
Ms Mottley added: “This will be a labour of love, but it won’t only be financed by the Government of Barbados. We wish we could do all on our own; we cannot. But we have the commitment to start and to do enough of it, that we believe that other persons of like mind, who recognise that this is a global asset and not just a Barbadian asset, will also come to the fore.”
The project will have four main phases, which will include the creation of a museum, a global research institute, and a memorial at the Newton Slave Burial Ground, where the bodies of 570 enslaved Africans were discovered in the 1970s.
Sir David Adjaye, a world-renowned British-Ghanaian architect, is the lead designer for the project. He said the memorial site will serve as a place of sombre reflection on the lives of the thousands of people who were forced into slavery.
In a statement, Sir David added: “Drawing upon the technique and philosophy of traditional African tombs, prayer sites and pyramids, the memorial is conceived as a space that contemporaneously honours the dead, edifies the living, and manifests a new diasporic future for Black civilisation that is both of the African continent and distinct from it.”
The research institute is slated to be the first resource centre of global stature in the Caribbean dedicated to exploring the history of slavery and its impact. It will utilise a collection of tens of millions of historic documents from the era, such as ship registers and slave sales ledgers, which currently reside in the Barbados Archives.
Ms Mottley said she hopes the research institute will position Barbados as a place from which the world can consider, accept, and analyse, the grim toll of slavery.
She stated: “Outside of the United Kingdom, Barbados has the largest transatlantic slave records and to that extent, we believe that we have, firstly, a moral duty to protect them. And, a duty to share with our people those records and to ensure that Barbadians understand all aspects of what happened to us when we came to this land.
“And then of course, that we, having been the victims in many instances, of what transpired in those records, we must now be able to reap a bounty from those records by creating a heritage economy.”
The ground-breaking for the ‘Heritage District’ is slated for 30 November 2022 on the first anniversary of Barbados’ transition to a parliamentary Republic. The project is expected to be finished by 2025.
