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Aye, It WIs Aabody
Paul Bristow • Apr 24, 2020
A Story of Scotland's Role in the Slave Trade
Earlier in the year, we worked with Birse Community Trust and Finzean Primary School on a fascinating project exploring the realities of Scotland’s role within the slave trade. Aye, it Wis Aabody is funded by Heritage Lottery Fund and Aberdeen Council, and it investigated the links between Birse and chattel slavery in the Caribbean. In particular, the project focussed on the establishment of Finzean Primary School (then Bankhead Endowed School) in 1732, with funds from the sale of enslaved people in Barbados.
The project was supported by Professor Sir Geoff Palmer OBE who is widely recognised for his work as a human rights activist, as well as being Jamaica’s Hon Consul in Scotland and Professor Emeritus in the School of Life Sciences at Heriot-Watt University.
With the help of the community heritage group, pupils in Finzean explored the history of the school, the lives of past pupils and links with the Caribbean over the centuries. They also studied the slave trade and its legacies and made contact with Sir Geoff’s former primary school in Kingston to learn more about their shared history with Jamaica.
We feel genuinely privileged to have worked on this project – and it was great to work alongside Sian Loftus from Birse Community Trust and Matthew Lee from Aberdeen University on refining the script. The BCT team developed lots of additional historical material for the book to allow people to delve further into the story. The book invites other communities to begin to explore their own areas connections to the slave trade too.
For us, the challenge was to find a way that we could tell the story in a voice that we felt was appropriate but still legitimate. It is clearly not our place to adopt the voice of enslaved people, so instead, we chose to focus on Scotland’s ongoing conversation with itself over the reality of our connections to the slave trade. A personification of Scotland narrates the story, questioning the readers as we question ourselves. Too many folk are still inclined to dismiss Scotland’s shameful part in the slave trade and the realities of how much it helped build our economy, everywhere from cities to villages – “It was a different time”. It was. But that does not excuse it. It is a matter of historical record. And if ever there was a time to be learning lessons from history, it is here and now. We are pleased to have been able to be a small part of that conversation.
Aye, It Wis Aabody will be distributed to every primary school in Aberdeenshire, every pupil at a partner school in Jamaica and will be available online.
MTC Project Blog
Earlier this month, we were asked to produce some artwork for the Afrowegian Project , imagining an Afro-Futurist version of the story of real world cycling superhero, Marshall 'Major' Taylor. The comic display panels form part of an exhibition by the riverside in Glasgow throughout October. You can read more about the work of the project and how to get involved. We're looking forward to doing some more collaborative work with Afrowegian's Jim Muotone, down in Inverclyde over the next few months.
Earlier this year, our director Paul Bristow spoke to Tall Tale films as part of CVS Inverclyde's Digital Open Studios project. Check out the short video below to hear Paul chat about storytelling, communities and his creative process for his own writing and his work with Magic Torch Comics CIC. You can also see his fairly messy home office under the stairs...
Back in 2019, artist Mhairi Robertson and myself, spent some time with a group of women in Glasgow, who told us about their experience of the asylum process, and the welcome they had found in Scotland. The project was pit together by the Poverty Truth Community, and the women all wanted to focus on the positive things that had happened to them since arriving, and the actions that other could take while in the process. A booklet of their stories, which also shares information on the support which is available for people, was launched during Refugee Week 2021 at an online event. The book can be downloaded for free on our website or read on our ISSUU page . A narrated version of the book, recorded by one of the women is also available to view and there is a short preview below.
Magic Torch Comics CIC are asking local young people to get involved in creating a science fiction adventure comic online. The comic, Starbound, is part of our ‘Outside The Box’ project, supported by National Lottery Community Fund. Over the last year, the project has delivered online workshops and involved young people in creating comics about life in lockdown and a collection of spooky stories for Galoshans. For this project, we wanted to do something a little different. It’s a choose your own adventure comic, where local people help create and shape the story on instagram. Every Monday evening, a short video will introduce the story so far and offer people choices for what happens next. People have 24 hours to vote, the artist creates the page and the next week we choose again, spinning the story off in unexpected directions each time. Right now, it’s still impossible to deliver face to face workshops, but if you’ve been online learning all day, you maybe don’t want to come to another online workshop in the evening. So we wanted to provide an opportunity that was easy for everyone to engage in, whatever way they want. Some people might just vote or comment on the story, or email in ideas, other people might want to get more involved and share their creations which we’ll then put out on the blog or in the weekly workshop videos. Although the focus of the project is comic storytelling, we want people to get involved in other creative ways. We’ll have story prompts and tips in the weekly workshop videos, there’s a whole world to explore, so we hope people will get inspired to create and share all sorts of work – Minecraft builds, music, moments of drama – whatever you like. Part of the reason we decided on science fiction was to open up possibilities to imagine. The last few months have been really confined, and it’s easy for your imagination to become confined too, so we wanted to help people break out of that a bit. Starbound launched on Monday 8th March on instagram , there's a new story vote every week. People can get involved on Magic Torch Comics Instagram page or by submitting ideas and suggestions directly on the project page .
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info@magictorchcomics.co.uk
27 East Street
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PA15 2RL