‘...many supplementary schools or Saturday schools were set up by black people as a result of what they saw as institutional racism, the low expectations of teachers and a racist curriculum acting together to marginalise black folk.’ Gilbert Browne in Joan Anim-Addo, Longest Journey: A History of Black Lewisham, London

Our present school system is one inherited by the architects of British imperialism with direct links to Deptford, where the 18th century Dockyard Shipwright Samuel Bentham designed the first panopticon, not as a prison, but as an educational institution for ship-building artisans. Post-plantation societies and the generations of people who traveled to Britain from Africa and the West Indies also encountered the ways in which schools were used to replicate colonial order and segregate communities from their histories. To counter this, families from the West Indies through the late 60s and 70s set up Saturday morning supplementary schools across Britain, including in Lewisham, set to teach histories of the struggle for freedom in Africa, the Caribbean and Britain.

This project explores what the practice of the supplementary school brings to the making of a children’s museum. Where museums today regularly express their intention to ‘decolonise’, we start from somewhere else, exploring the supplementary school’s practice of inter-generational, community-led learning to lift community and fight racism. We are currently working with St James Hatcham CoE school to build a children’s museum in the school reflecting these ideas. This project has a strong focus on the local area and proposes that students should engage with difficult histories of colonialism and enslavement in Deptford, as well as struggles of freedom and resistance - always leaving with a sense of what they can do in the present. The process of building the children’s museum is evolving through workshops that began in 2022 with families, community activists, and teachers, who are generating an improvised curriculum and museum building process that enables the school and wider community to work with histories necessary to understand their struggles in the present. The route, marked on the website and through QR codes in the local area, will propose lessons devised by the group, encouraging a revival of the supplementary school model in the present - and, in turn, supporting schools to build their own ‘supplementary’ museums.

The project is led by Rebecca Matthews, St James Hatcham School, Deptford People’s Heritage Museum’s Joyce Jacca and Bianca Santa Anna Caballero, with a children’s museum set to open in January 2025. It is supported by Dr Janna Graham and students from Goldsmiths BA Curating.