The village of Port Sunlight was founded in 1888 by global business tycoon, William Lever, for the workers at his Lever Brothers soapworks. It provided spacious and attractive housing, social and cultural amenities, and access to green space on their doorsteps. The celebration of Lever’s social endeavour has subsequently been a focal point of Port Sunlight’s managed heritage narrative.

However, Lever was also a staunch colonialist whose exploitative and racist overseas enterprises in the early half of the twentieth caused severe harm to communities of the Global Majority.

Today, the village is predominantly managed by the independent charitable trust, Port Sunlight Village Trust. It owns and lets around 300 properties, in addition to acting as the custodian of its green spaces, monuments, numerous museums, and community offerings.

PSVT understood the importance of engagement that reflects upon Port Sunlight’s problematic truths and positive achievements alike.

The initial project commission wished to produce heritage interpretation telling a fuller story of Port Sunlight via community collaboration. Before this work could be undertaken, however, I recognised that it was first necessary to help PSVT prioritise workforce competencies and knowledge around colonialism, antiracism, and collaboration, community relationship development, and ultimately rethinking the broader managed story of Port Sunlight.  

I designed a project that would foster a more future-focused heritage narrative that translates Port Sunlight’s unique past into stories with ongoing relevance to the world of today. For example: colonial legacies and antiracism, exploring working-class histories and socially just placemaking, community allotments and food sustainability, etc.

• Encourage reflective public exploration of the local colonial past through creative engagement.

• Boost the interest of young people aged 16-25 from Merseyside in the past and future story of Port Sunlight. 

• Establish connections between PSVT Global Majority communities in the Wirral. 

•   Increase the knowledge, confidence, and capacity of the PSVT workforce to facilitate dialogue around the colonial past and antiracism.

The project centred around the design, coordination, and evaluation of four pilot interventions:

1. A free, five-week community poetry workshop with creative practitioner Amina Atiq, responding to the theme of place connection between Port Sunlight and the African plantation settlement of Lusanga (formerly “Leverville”). This culminated in an intimate performance and the creation of a poetry book for the Port Sunlight collection.

2. A three-day creative research workshop for young people aged 16-25. Employed as creative researchers, they gained paid work experience through exploration of creative walking methods with support from psychogeographic practitioner Dr Morag Rose. They collectively created an alternative map booklet and a walking tour of the village.

3.  A performance-based training workshop for the PSVT workforce and village partners, delivered by Odd Arts. It presented a bespoke play about William Lever’s colonial business enterprises, which was framed by group learning activities and a discussion forum around antiracism.

4. Hosted days out in the village for local community groups, the Wirral Chinese Association and Wirral Deen Centre, as part of long-term friendship development efforts to better meet the needs of underserved communities in the village.

• Strategic roadmap reportrecommending next steps for PSVT to sustain project outcomes and achieve longer-term opportunities identified during the knowledge transfer partnership.   

• Five-year SWOT map outlining the key strengths, weaknesses, threats, and opportunities for PSVT developing a financially viable management model that makes Port Sunlight a more diverse and welcoming place for visitors, residents, and the workforce.

• Permanent museum exhibition: examining Port Sunlight’s links to colonialism.

• A digital hub of knowledge and resources for the workforce, covering Port Sunlight’s wide-ranging colonial past in the context of local and national history.  

• A pilot toolkit allowing the PSVT workforce to repeat and build upon pilot activities.