Cohort 2026 Research Placement Project
About The Project
This project uses the collection of African musical instruments at Nottingham Castle as a means of understanding how to engage the local community in discussions around the colonial histories of local cultural heritage collections. In doing so, it aims to find ways to conduct ethical research into such collections, and to develop strategies for contextualising and exhibiting them sensitively.
Nottingham Castle became the first municipal museum in the UK in 1878, but little research has been done into its collections. The Castle holds a sizeable collection of musical instruments of African origin, most of which date from the nineteenth century. Many instruments were donated by individual collectors, or else came to the Castle via other Museum collections. The collection raises issues around the colonial practices of extracting cultural products from their country of origin, as well as potential misinterpretation of the instruments’ cultural functions. Knowledge of these instruments is currently limited. The Nottingham City Museums and Galleries (NCMG) database contains some information about collectors, chronology, locations, and materials, but there are many gaps, and little to no information on the functions and sound of the instruments. There is also little understanding of how these instruments may have been made accessible to the public in the past (either in the way they are stored or through exhibitions and outreach events).
This project will explore the Castle’s archives and will use databases of similar instruments in other UK collections to develop our understanding of the objects’ provenance, geographical origins, sound, cultural meaning, and history of display. All the while, it will unpick the colonial practices underpinning the development and contextualisation of the collection. To understand how the community would like to engage with the collection, and to gain a variety of perspectives and recommendations for the collection’s interpretation, the project will work closely with a heritage community group the Legacy Makers, whose ancestors were enslaved. The group’s recommendations will be sought through two focus groups.
The outcomes of the project will include updates to the NCMG database and a report detailing findings on the instruments and recommendations from the focus groups. These will inform future curatorial work and will also be shared with other heritage and educational organisations so that the benefits of the project can reach beyond the Castle.
Project Aims
The overall aims of the project are:
- To investigate the provenance, cultural meanings, and function of the African instruments in the NCMG collection using secondary literature, the Castle’s own archives, and through comparison with online databases of similar instruments.
- To research the history of displaying the collection by using the Castle’s archives, local newspaper archives, and through discussion with the Community Partner.
- To connect the collection to broader histories of colonialism and imperialism by doing secondary reading about these histories.
- To understand community responses to the collection and to gather their recommendations about how best to contextualise it.
Project Team
- Research Candidate: Alex Meade
- Lead Supervisor: Dr Joanne Cormac (University of Nottingham)
- Co-Supervisor: Dr Natasha Hodgson (Nottingham Trent University)
- Community Supervisor: Ann Inscker (Nottingham City Museums & Galleries/Nottingham City Council)