About Us
Deptford Peoples Heritage Museum is located in the Pepys Resource Centre, next to the River Thames in Deptford.
What?
The Deptford People's Heritage Museum is a Black-led Museum located in the Pepys Resource Centre, a stone's throw from the Deptford Docks in London - currently the contested site of a major real estate development project - from which notable ships and perpetrators travelled to abduct millions of people into the slave trade, extract resources through the exploits of the East India company and at which people plotted struggles for freedom. Set up among community resources initiated by local women, including a food bank, women's support services and other locally led initiatives, and in response to Black Lives Matter protests in 2021, the Museum collection is made by people who live in the surrounding area who trace histories and ancestral links to and from Deptford, tell the stories of local struggles for freedom and plot these histories in relation to contemporary issues facing our community and others around the world today. The collection exists in the physical space of the Resource Centre with an on-line version currently in development.
Who? The Village Ethos.
The Museum is governed by a ‘village ethos’ approach. It is first and foremost accountable to its surrounding community. Through open local assemblies, themes, issues and processes are put in place on a short and long term basis. Areas of the collection and working groups are proposed by neighbours, local organisations, students and other supporters who engage in the development and realisation of the Museum’s projects. A weekly meeting takes place for those currently working on projects to check in, support one another and help to evolve the ongoing development of the museum. Project partners include diasporic communities in Deptford and abroad; individuals and organisations engaged in local memory work around the dockyard and its naval and colonial histories; local education providers, community organisers, campaigning groups and activists and others.
Ghosts:
We want to engage with histories of the Docks and our local area in ways that link the past to the local situation today. This work includes our ancestors, who are honoured and kept alive by engaging in the work of collective remembering, sharing information, caring for each other and supporting each other to feel uplifted in the face of the struggles of the past as they live with us in the present. The ancestors compel us to ensure that those alive today do not forget the past so that we may build from their struggles. As such, the reason to collect material culture is deeply entwined with the struggles of people (and especially younger people) in our community today.
How?
i. Open Door
We have an open door policy. People are invited to drop in, initiate a collection, bring material for an existing collection area and/or engage with material that relate to the histories of the docks, their own cultures and items related to the struggles of the past and the present. The activity of collecting and engaging with stories and material culture is integrated into other support activities of the Pepys Resource Centre, including the food bank, women’s services as well as through special drop in sessions and family days around emerging themes in the collection.
ii. Collective Learning
The Museum collection and programme exist for community members to learn about each other and our histories. Objects from where we are from help us to think about the stories of travel in their pain and glory and how they were created by historical events. Linking these journeys to our lives in the present helps us to prioritise what we need and what we should fight for.
Collective education is at the centre of the Museum - we teach each other and extend what we have learned to younger generations, through school learning packs, online material, partnering with local colleges and universities beginning from the issues people face now to work back to their various histories.
iii. Collection Building Events
In order to instigate moments of intensive collection and discussion of objects that are important to people we host regular collecting events. These take the form of Pop Up Museums in the local area, inviting people to bring objects to and engage with objects from the museum’s collection,
scan-a-thons, oral history sessions, storytelling, and family days at the Pepys Resource Centre and other community sites. Walk-shops, or walks invite people to talk about their experiences of key issues and linkages to the area in a way that is connected to specific sites. We take part in annual events honouring enslaved people who have been buried in Lewisham and beyond.
iv. Making Histories Visible - Exhibiting
In order to make the collection visible we host the collections on-line, through exhibitions at the Pepys Resource Centre and community sites, through pop-ups etc. Exhibitions are moments to reflect and engage with material culture or a theme of local importance drawn from our regular assemblies, and to plan actions around this in the future.
Our first exhibition, Chip on Your Shoulder, took place in October-November 2020 and looked at the poor conditions of naval ship-builders alongside the extractive and violent histories of enslavement as a trajectory of exploitation and violence that links communities often seen as separate and has important consequences for the area today.
v. Tracing Lines
Our histories are varied and trace lines to other parts of the world. We have, for example, a relationship with scholars and youth organisers in Senegal, looking at similar issues
Through work with Cheikh Anta Diop University we are building a series of intergenerational exchanges between young people living and studying in Deptford/Lewisham and those in Dakar, thinking together about the legacies of enslavement and de-enslavement that live in the present of both places.
We also seek out relationships with other community museums and self-organised collections and practitioners in the UK and abroad.
vi. Cultural Studies approach
We understand culture as a lens through which to look at the points of intersection and connection between our lived experiences of struggle. We analyse the past through the lens of the relations of power that dominate our present.
Funding
We are a volunteer-run organisation who has thus far only received small grants.