Blood Sugar
A co-produced film on the slavery history of Newstead Abbey, Nottinghamshire
Screening and discussion hosted by the Slave Trade Legacies group, Bright Ideas Nottingham and University of Nottingham
The co-produced poem-based film, Blood Sugar, represents creatively the fundamental importance of the lives and work of African people, enslaved and trafficked through the transatlantic slave trade, to the creation and survival of the country house, a key site of British heritage. The focus is Newstead Abbey, Nottinghamshire, restored in the early 19th century by Thomas Wildman, owner of Quebec sugar plantation in Jamaica and its enslaved African people. The film, led by the Slave Trade Legacies group, has African Caribbean people at its heart as interpreters, writers, illustrators, film-makers and performers. It draws on archives-based historical interpretation, and the lived experiences of enslavement and racism handed down through song and other oral traditions, to recreate the link between Newstead and the group’s enslaved African ancestors. The creative film format negotiates the dangers of reinforcing dominant Eurocentric views when original archives, produced mainly by white plantation owners, are the central focus of interpretation. The film’s poetic form is particularly appropriate as Newstead Abbey is famous as the home of the poet Lord Byron.
The film is linked to the collaborators’ wider research and practice in relation to the historical connections of British country estates with slavery (eg, Haggerty and Seymour, 2013 and 2018; Seymour, 1998), critiques of the neglect of these links in heritage site interpretation (eg, Slave Trade Legacies, 2015 The Colour of Money film https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lsDMrPCPNwI) and creative representations of these histories (eg, Mitchell and Sobers, 2013). It also draws on wider academic work undertaken as part of the UCL Legacies of British Slave-ownership projects and available through their on-line resources (see https://www.ucl.ac.uk/lbs/).
Filmed within Newstead Abbey, Blood Sugar seeks to reclaim the British country house as a site of African-Caribbean heritage and to open it up to people of African descent who have previously felt alienated and underrepresented in this key heritage space. It is now part of the heritage display at Newstead Abbey and is available on YouTube https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eos2yZxuYmY
Film director: Dr Shawn Naphtali Sobers, University of the West of England
Poetry and performance: Michelle ‘Mother’ Hubbard and the Slave Trade Legacies group
Illustrations: Kim Thompson
Historical materials: Dr Helen Bates and Dr Susanne Seymour, University of Nottingham
Facilitation: Lisa Robinson, Bright Ideas Nottingham and Simon Brown, Nottingham City Museums and Galleries
The film was supported by funding from the Arts and Humanities Research Council (AHRC) grant, Practising Reparative Histories in Rural Heritage Sites, Nottingham City Council, Arts Council England and The Wolfson Foundation. It has been shortlisted for the AHRC Research in Film Awards 2018 in the People on the Move category.
This film showing is also supported by the Institute for the Study of Slavery, the School of Geography and the Head of Volunteering, University of Nottingham.
Download the 'Blood Sugar' event poster (pdf)