Whose Past?

Dr Samantha Lauren, Curator of the National Museum of Montserrat and Montserrat National Trust staff member, blogs about her experience during a TAP INTO-funded visit to St. Christopher National Trust. The visit supported deepening connections between places connected to Charles Paget Wade and the eclectic Snowshill House and Garden in the Cotswolds, England.

Group arriving in St Kitts and Nevis to a warm welcome – Samantha is on the right of the photo

Our journey to St. Kitts and Nevis aimed to connect colleagues, build relationships, and deepen our understanding of our shared cultural heritage. The trip exceeded expectations, fostering valuable new connections and insights into heritage management.

Physically visiting heritage sites helped us understand how fellow organisations, such as the Nevis Heritage Society, handle pricing, displays, narrative panels, interpretation, and gift shop presentations. Meeting with colleagues in person made it possible to connect in ways that emails and conference calls can never replicate.

It was particularly eye-opening to witness the Nevisian’s challenges in applying for UNESCO World Heritage status and the ongoing struggles faced by the St. Christopher Trust in renovating and redesigning the St. Kitts National Museum with limited funding.

Seeing our financially struggling Caribbean organisations through the eyes of our UK colleagues had several effects. It highlighted the stark resource disparity between Caribbean and UK heritage organisations. It underscored our shared challenges in tackling heritage decay and loss and building public engagement.

It also spurred reflections on Montserrat’s position as a United Kingdom Overseas Territory (UKOT)* and its implications for interpreting and presenting local history.

As a result of volcanic activity, Montserrat has few physical remains attesting to historical periods of enslavement, indentureship, sharecropping, or the Caribbean labour movement.

The lack of constant physical reminders – accessible plantations, agricultural processing facilities, and transportation networks – which St Kitts and other islands retain in abundance, combined with a greater focus on recovery from more recent natural disasters (Hurricane Hugo in 1989 and the Soufriere Hills Volcanic Crises from 1995 to the present), leaves little space to focus on more typical, colonial Caribbean narratives.

Our discussions about Montserrat’s heritage raised critical questions about the future focus of the island’s narrative.

Should we continue prioritising resilience and environmental conservation or delve deeper into uncovering and preserving the remnants of our colonial history?

Will we conveniently forget a fraught past or consciously choose to promote sites of suffering as tourist destinations?

No matter our choice, we can no longer be content to echo shibboleths. The twenty-first-century challenge for heritage organisations worldwide is finding the right balance – exploring which histories to rescue and presenting them in a voice that resonates with diverse audiences and converts them to advocates.

Collaborating with our colleagues in St. Kitts, Nevis, and the UK offers tremendous opportunities. In the long term, we aspire to create a digital repository or online exhibition space to showcase our intertwined narratives. This project will be particularly valuable for Montserrat, where many significant historical texts are out of print and inaccessible.

Digitising these works will provide much-needed public access, allowing the island’s residents and the diaspora to engage with their history and celebrate the contributions of local historians while serving as a virtual windfall for the global academic community.

Our thanks

We extend our deep thanks to INTO for making this trip possible, to Professor Nicola Thomas for welcoming us into the Wade project, Julie Reynolds for sharing her invaluable heritage business insights, Tommy Maddinson for his detailed archival guidance, and Etsu Bradshaw-Caines, Richard Lupinacci and Lorna Glover Abungu for hosting us in St. Kitts and Nevis.

We look forward to future collaborations with the University of Exeter, National Trust Snowshill, St. Christopher National Trust, and the Nevis Heritage Society, and we hope Snowshill’s publications and exhibits will increasingly recognise Montserratian and St. Kittitian contributions to Charles Paget Wade’s idiosyncratic worldview and home.

By challenging Eurocentric narratives and empowering Caribbean voices, we can shift the perception of our heritage from being objects of history to subjects and agents of our own stories. We believe this approach will be valuable for the National Trust as they seek greater inclusivity and forge new ground by attracting and engaging a new generation of heritage enthusiasts.

These knowledge exchanges were made possible thanks to TAP INTO grants, generously funded by the Helen Hamlyn Trust.

*UKOT – United Kingdom Overseas Territories have constitutional and historical links with the United Kingdom, but do not form part of the United Kingdom itself. The King is the Head of State of all UKOTs, and he is represented by a Governor or Commissioner. Each Territory has its own Constitution, its own Government and its own local laws.

The 14 territories are: Anguilla, Bermuda, British Antarctic Territory, British Indian Ocean Territory, British Virgin Islands, Cayman Islands, Falkland Islands, Gibraltar, Montserrat, Pitcairn, Henderson, Ducie and Oeno Islands, Saint Helena, Ascension and Tristan da Cunha, South Georgia and the South Sandwich Islands, Turks and Caicos Islands.