An exploration of Scarborough’s colonial past through the Harrison collection offered a fascinating selection of diaries, photographs, taxidermy and gramophone discs. This project examined past and present attitudes towards Africa and investigated the impact of colonialism on contemporary global issues.
Colonel James Harrison (1857–1923) of Brandesburton Hall, East Yorkshire, undertook expeditions to the Congo in 1904 and 1908. Harrison hunted for sport and brought back six Indigenous people of the Ituri Forest for public exhibition.
The theme ‘Local to Global’ used this local collection as a starting point to help us understand wider national and global issues and topics—such as Indigenous rights, conservation, biodiversity and habitat loss—to develop thinking around how the actions of individuals could impact both negatively and positively on creating a sustainable world. The project was fuelled by research on these themes, which was gathered and published as regular articles on the project website.
Creating connections and networks of knowledge was vital to the momentum of the project—there was work taking place to link to partners in the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC), which brought the context up to date and broadened knowledge about shared environmental concerns.
On a more local scale, the cohort of Citizen Researchers, a group of volunteers from the Scarborough area, worked hard on examining and researching the collection held in the stores at Scarborough Museums and Galleries.
The project was funded by the National Lottery Heritage Fund and managed by Scarborough Museums and Galleries, working in partnership with North Yorkshire Libraries.