This Accursed Thing: Interactive video drama

History of the transatlantic slave trade

The history of the slave trade is complex and can be hard to understand from a modern day perspective. One way to address this is through the experiences of some of the individuals involved.

This drama allows you to talk with a range of historical characters, some real and some imagined, for whom slavery and the slave trade were an everyday reality. Using interactive video, you can select questions and statements to put to a range of people with different experiences and points of view about the trade.

Developed from a museum drama project created and performed by Andrew Ashmore & Associates in partnership with the Performance, Learning and Heritage Research Project as www.manchester.ac.uk/plh, it was funded by the Arts & Humanities Research Council as part of the 2007 bicentenary of British abolition of Slavery.