Donkor exhibits at new London, Sugar & Slavery gallery
On 10 November 2007, Museum in Docklands will open the only permanent gallery in London to examine the city’s involvement in transatlantic slavery and its legacy on the capital.
The new gallery, called London, Sugar & Slavery, will reveal how London’s involvement in slavery has shaped the capital since the 17th century, and will challenge what people think they know about the transatlantic slave trade. It will debunk the myth that London was a minor player in the trade by showing that it funded much of the city’s industrial and financial success. From Jamaica Road to the Bank of England, from the merchant houses of Blackheath to the nation’s art collections, profits from this most lucrative trade shaped the metropolis.
London, Sugar & Slavery will show it was not just a few evangelical parliamentarians who abolished the transatlantic slave trade, but a widespread grass roots movement that included people freed from enslavement who wrote about their experiences, thousands of ordinary citizens who lobbied collectively and women who campaigned with their purses by boycotting sugar that had been produced by enslaved Africans.
The gallery will reveal an untold history, which joins the dots between ordinary Londoners with a taste for the sweeter things in life, arch-capitalism, despoiled West African civilizations and the thriving multicultural city we enjoy today. 
Visitors will find themselves questioning the real motivations behind the abolition legislation, discovering Britain’s continuing relationship with its West Indian colonies and be challenged to think about the long term effects of the slave trade on London and Londoners today.
Personal accounts, film, music, interactives and over 140 objects will bring home the complexities and humanity of the issues around the roaring trade in sugar and humans, slave resistance and the abolition campaign, and the legacies of the enduring relationship between London and the Caribbean.
An immersive sound and light experience, will encourage visitors to consider the meaning of enslavement and freedom both in terms of the transatlantic slave trade and for us all today, whilst spaces in the gallery are given over to community projects especially designed to involve Londoners of all ages and backgrounds in a story that binds us all.
The gallery will challenge what people think they know about the transatlantic slave trade and show how this terrible traffic made the London we know today.