Grant for museum display amid reparation calls
Members of a Kenyan community will work with Kendal Museum to "retell the story" of the collection.
**Grant for museum display amid reparation calls**
**The exhibition at Kendal Museum features hunting trophies from Kenya**
A museum has been awarded a £100,000 grant to re-examine its ties to an African community amid a campaign for reparations.
Kendal Museum includes a display of hunting trophies from western Kenya, donated by Colonel Edgar Garston Harrison, a British Army officer who served there from 1895 to 1905.
Research by sociologist Dr Joe Rigby, an authority on the social and environmental history of Cumbria, uncovered connections between the collection and a reparations campaign from the Nandi community in Kenya.
Under the project established with the grant, the Nandi community was "cleared" from around 1,235 sq miles (3,200 sq km) by Harrison's troops, who destroyed crops and homes and seized livestock.
The funding is supporting the two-year project titled "From Kenya to Kendal and back again: reconnecting communities through Kendal Museum's natural and social history collection".
Rigby, who was raised in Kendal and is a lecturer at the University of Chester, said he was working with Kendal Museum and members of the Nandi community "to retell the story of this collection, and to explore the shared history of Kendal and Nandi".
Harrison paid for an extension to Kendal Museum to accommodate his collection, and for decades the museum described him as a "benefactor".
However, the project said research had shown Harrison's life and collection were "deeply entangled with the violence of colonialism".
Westmorland and Furness Council, which owns the collection, said the project would bring the two communities together "to research and interpret the collections connected to their intertwined histories".
They would then collaborate with the museum to help shape how they are presented in future.
The Lib-dem led authority said cultural exchange opportunities would also be considered, with one idea being to invite keen runners from the Nandi community to a fell race in Cumbria.
The project will be carried out by the Cumbria Development Education Centre and the Nandi-Kendal Association.
The association's coordinator, Kinyango Seroney, a member of the Nandi community living in the UK, said: "For the best part of a century Harrison's 'hunting trophies' have been on display to the people of Kendal, but without mention of Harrison's actions against the Nandi.
"After the operation led by Harrison, the Nandi were pushed out of their homelands and suffered great loss and pain."
A request to return cultural objects, including horned instruments believed to have been taken from the Nandi community, has been submitted to Westmorland and Furness Council.
The authority said the project was not intended to reach "any predetermined outcome for the collection" and that decisions about its future interpretations would be guided by "those most closely connected to them".
Cabinet member for culture Helen Chaffey said: "The project is about bringing people together to explore history, build new relationships and ensure that a wider range of voices help shape how our collections are understood and interpreted."