Re-interpreting convict transportation: Decolonising the convict transportation exhibition at the National Justice Museum (NJM), Nottingham

The remit of this collaborative doctoral award is to carry out research on and offer recommendations for the critical reimagining of the National Justice Museum's (NJM) convict transportation exhibition and related programming. The project will be carried out through historiographical research, archival research, and museological fieldwork in both the UK and Australia.

There is a need to expand and refocus the current history presented in the exhibition and to do so while considering the complex narratives within the wider field of 'decolonial work' in museums and heritage. Presently, the exhibition, which was developed in 2010, focuses on the journey of adult convicts transported from Britain to Australia between 1788 and 1868.

While it is an engaging and immersive experience of the history of transportation, the exhibition is lacking in its presentation of transportation as a mechanism of colonialism, the legacy of which can still be felt in the British justice system and Australian society today.

Through my analysis of an underutilised resource in NJM's archive, the Millbank Register, I will present the museum with an opportunity to refocus the exhibition. The Millbank Register is one of the few prison registers in existence that details the socio-economic background and behaviour of boy's post-trial and awaiting transportation in Millbank penitentiary.

The names, voices, and stories of these boys paint a vivid picture of class and ethnic discrimination in nineteenth century Britain which can still be seen in today's juvenile justice system. Examining the histories of convict youth raises critical questions about social justice, the ideology of childhood, and the ethics of juvenile punishment. Through the archival and historical analysis of these narratives we can bring these questions to light in the museum space, challenging visitors to consider the legacy of Britain's colonial history and ongoing impact on disadvantaged and marginalised young bodies.

The exhibition can further ask visitors to consider the perpetuation of colonial legacies within the justice system not just within Britain but within the former colonies, in this case Australia. Currently, a problematic gap in the existing exhibition is the lack of acknowledgement of the long-term impact transportation has had on Aboriginal communities.

Aboriginal Australians continue to be treated as second class citizens and are disproportionately represented in the Australian criminal justice system. While these are not our stories to shape and tell, as a national museum NJM has a responsibility to acknowledge the role Britain played in creating these racial, class-based hierarchies in its former colony which presently the exhibition does not do.

It is necessary to critically engage with the role of the museum in continuing to impose colonial modes of remembering on, and to the detriment of, indigenous cultures and peoples.

The proposed output for this project alongside the academic thesis is a decolonial toolkit. This document will be shaped by observational and interview-based fieldwork at select Australian museums and heritage sites. It is my aim that this document will have a legacy beyond its possible application to NJM's convict transportation exhibition and have the potential to be shared with other relevant museums and/or heritage sites.

The recommendations for decolonial praxis presented in the toolkit will be based in research on design-thinking, prison tourism, difficult heritage, and creative interpretation techniques. The aim is to provide the museum with a toolkit for how to sensitively and appropriately curate a forward-thinking exhibition on convict and aboriginal histories and the ongoing colonial legacies of those histories.