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.

Today, most of the village is 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.

William Lever has historically been celebrated for his philanthropy and has continued being focal to the local narrative of place. However, he 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.

PSVT recognised the importance of developing a village narrative approach that better the nuanced complexity of the past, reflecting upon Port Sunlight’s problematic truths and positive achievements alike.

When this project was initially commissioned, its aim was to facilitate the creation of collaborative heritage interpretation that tells fuller story of Port Sunlight across the village site. However, I quickly recognised that more foundational action was required to develop PSVT workforce knowledge and competencies, foster community relationships, explore creative collaboration methods, and rethink Port Sunlight’s wider managed story of place.

I was eager for the project to help PSVT foster a future-focused heritage narrative that emphatically translates Port Sunlight’s unique past into stories with ongoing relevance to the world of today. For example, exploring working-class histories and socially just placemaking, colonial legacies and antiracism, 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 with the past and future story of Port Sunlight. 

• Foster connections between PSVT ad Global Majority communities in Merseyside.

•  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 a series of pilot interventions that would provide a foundation for ongoing action by PSVT. These were:

• 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.

•   A three-day workshop in which young people aged 16-25 were employed as creative researchers to explore and respond to the village using a creative walking method with support from psychogeographic practitioner Dr Morag Rose. They collectively created an alternative map booklet and a walking tour of the village.

• A 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.

• Local community groups the Wirral Chinese Association and Wirral Deen Centre, were hosted as special guests on a day out in Port Sunlight as part of long-term friendship development efforts to better meet the needs of underserved communities in the village.

• A five-year map of strengths, weaknesses, threats, and opportunities for developing a financially viable management model that makes Port Sunlight more diverse and welcoming place for visitors, residents, and the workforce.

• A strategic report of recommended next steps for PSVT to sustain positive project outcomes and achieve long-term project-related opportunities identified during the knowledge transfer partnership.   

• Permanent, new museum exhibition about Port Sunlight’s links to colonialism.

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

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