Massive Attack have backed a campaign to improve the diversity of the school curriculum in England.
As The Guardian reports, the group have joined by the CARGO Classroom (Charting African Resilience Generating Opportunities) project established by poet Lawrence Hoo and creative director Chaz Golding, which argues that many schoolchildren are missing out on important parts of history in their education, including teaching on the realities of Britain’s colonial history and involvement in the slave trade.
Together with academics from the University of Bristol and other education experts, Hoo and Golding have produced a series of interactive online lessons which are designed to tell the stories of inspiring people of African and African diaspora descent. The lessons, which are designed to be included in the history curriculum for pupils aged 11 to 14, use poetry, film and illustrations to tell the stories. Massive Attack have written music to accompany the poetry elements of the lessons.
"Everything begins with education," Massive Attack’s Robert Del Naja, AKA 3D, told The Guardian. "Without an understanding of the brutal consequences of British colonial history and the reality of the slave trade, we can’t move forwards equitably.
"Without kids knowing that [Edward] Colston’s [the slavetrader, a Bristol statue of whom was toppled during Black Lives Matter protests in 2020] legacy was of a philanthropy built on crimes against humanity, you can’t have a reasonable debate about monuments and the legacy of naming civic spaces. CARGO is a perfect piece of activism, a positive intervention in the education sector, in a backdrop of culture war politics."
Find out more about the CARGO Classroom project here.
