The Montserrat National Trust is partnering with the Endangered Material Knowledge Programme (EMKP) to document and digitally preserve the island’s rich history of handmade material culture. Titled A Nation of Makers, the project has received funding support from Arcadia, a charitable fund of Lisbet Rausing and Peter Baldwin, through the EMKP, hosted at the British Museum.
The initiative will create digital records of locally made objects housed at the National Museum of Montserrat, as well as legacy photographs and film footage captured by celebrated Montserratian historian, musician, and documentarian Randall Greenaway.
Montserrat’s “remote location, weak economy, and absence of manufacturing have always inspired Montserratians to find clever ways to make rather than buy material objects,” read the project summary.
The collection includes Indigenous tools and pottery, cassava and lime processing equipment, masquerade and carnival costumes, musical instruments, and everyday objects such as fly catchers, palm-leaf hats, and handmade paper hair curlers. Many of these were crafted from natural or repurposed materials, reflecting the island’s deep cultural memory and practical ingenuity.
This project is especially timely, as the population decline triggered by Hurricane Hugo in 1989 and the prolonged volcanic eruptions starting in 1995 led to the dispersal of many families and the knowledge systems they carried.
To ensure these material traditions are not lost, the project team will photograph and catalogue objects in both the museum’s permanent and loaned collections. Community members will be invited to contribute object histories, provenance stories, and usage details to build fuller contextual records. In addition, digitised images and selected film footage from Greenaway’s archive will enrich the repository.
All collected data, including images, video, and descriptions, will be made accessible via the EMKP database, allowing global researchers and Montserratians at home and abroad to explore and engage with this cultural heritage.
This marks the second EMKP-supported project for Montserrat, following The Uke – Montserrat’s Last Musical Instrument, and underscores the island’s importance as a site of unique material knowledge in the Caribbean.
More on the EMKP and the Montserrat project is available at emkp.org.
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