Successful Heritage Lottery Funding Bid for Carolyn Conroy
Posted on 8 July 2016
Congratulations to History of Art Alumna Carolyn Conroy!
Dr Carolyn Conroy is part of a small project team based in Hull that has recently been awarded £39,100 by the Heritage Lottery Fund (HLF) for their research project to uncover the histories of people of African descent in the Yorkshire area. The team will focus particularly on the East Riding and the city of Hull as part of the Hull City of Culture 2017 celebrations and encourage the local community and volunteers to get involved.
The project is unique to the area and will connect with the region’s strong historical association with William Wilberforce and the anti-slavery movement. The team intend to show that an African presence in Britain is not a recent phenomenon and instead will recover stories from around the time of Wilberforce to the present day: c.1750-2007. An important new website has been created to showcase the new stories and new research. It will enable and encourage everyone to participate in the collecting of stories of people of African descent by inviting people to view and submit information, ideas, photographs, essays and individual stories.
The Heritage Lottery Fund award also makes provision for the employment of a Project Researcher and two exhibitions are planned at Hull History Centre in 2017 and Beverley Treasure House in 2018. The team is also working with the James Reckitt Library on an oral histories initiative titled ‘Contemporary Voices’ and are supported by the Wilberforce Institute for the Study of Slavery and Emancipation (WISE), Hull City Council, Hull History Centre, Beverley Treasure House and others.
See the Project website for more details: www.africansinyorkshireproject.com/