Join us for an exhibition viewing and panel discussion of our Cornwallis Cloth exhibition and film installation in the Visitor Centre.

Inspired by oral testimony and the untold stories of British Caribbean lives during the Second World War, Cornwallis Cloth explores themes of loyalty, freedom, and emerging post-colonial identity.

Join Sweet Patootee Arts and the Old Royal Naval College Interpretation Team for a talk exploring how living testimony and creative research can be used to break through structural gaps to restore long silenced histories. This conversation will focus on the barriers of archival silence, the power of oral testimony and ways of championing untold stories.

The evening will be chaired by Montaz Marché, a historian and writer who specialises in histories of gender and race in early modern and modern Britain and the British Atlantic World.

Schedule: 

• 6pm-7.30pm: Exhibition viewing
• 7.30pm-8.30pm: Talk and Q&A

About Sweet Patootee Arts

Sweet Patootee Arts is a London-based Arts and Heritage organisation rooted in a passion for storytelling and Britain’s multicultural heritage.

They produce high-quality films and heritage projects using oral testimonies and archive resources as the inspiration. These films then become the catalyst for public engagement in museums, galleries, learning establishments, community hubs, and online.

About Montaz Marché

Montaz Marché is a historian and writer whose research focuses on histories of gender and race in early modern and modern Britain and the British Atlantic World. She is a Research Fellow on the Valuable Lives Project at Centre for the Study of the Legacies of British Slavery’s at University College London. She completed her PhD at the University of Birmingham, titled Mapping the Dark and Feminine: Black Women in Eighteenth-Century London, the first comprehensive social history on Black women in eighteenth-century London.

Elsewhere, she has worked on a number of academic and public history projects, notably as the research specialist for the Communities of Liberation project with Tower Hamlets Local History Centre and Archives. She is also the director of the Caribbean Cricket Archive, an online interactive digital platform that showcases the communities’ histories of Caribbean cricket clubs in the UK from 1900 to the present day. She regularly works in historical consultancy for media, television, film, heritage, and public engagement. She has featured on television, social media, and radio projects with BBC and Channel 4.