In this article, John D. Giblin, Nikki Grout, and Zachary Kingdon summarize the collections that Reveal and Connect encountered and the colonial activities that they are evidence of, providing a physical record, an echo, or legacy of Scottish activity in African countries during the colonial era.
Especially during colonial wars – such as in Sudan and Egypt in the 1880s and 1890s – many objects came to Scotland.
The main output of this initial phase of Reveal and Connect is an online, open access, report, arranged in two halves, aimed at museum professionals and academic researchers.
- The first half includes characterizations of each museum’s collections, arranged by Scottish region, providing an overview of each collection’s scope, including, where known, types of objects held from which countries and cultures, significant areas of collecting, notable donors, areas for further research and associated material, for example, archival records.
- The second half of this report is arranged by African country so that readers can, if they wish, see which museums in Scotland hold material from each nation and can then look in more detail at the respective museum characterization. It is intended that later phases of Reveal and Connect will develop approaches to sharing this information more directly with communities.
Following the outcome of project focus groups in 2023, we also intend to use the report to develop and support sustainable approaches to community consultative research and knowledge sharing around these collections, expanding awareness of the collecting and cultural histories in which they are implicated.
The overarching aim of the project is to support wider access and engagement with these collections.
Earlier, an outcome was Reveal and Connect: African and Caribbean Collections in Scottish Museums undertook a national review of African and Caribbean Collections in Scottish museums.
