Creative Partnerships, Cumbria is pleased to provide this online resource to support teaching and learning across the curriculum and help address themes of slavery, displacement, diversity, exploitation and human rights. We hope that it will become a useful and sustainable classroom tool.

Many teachers in Creative Partnerships schools told us that they would welcome ideas for addressing issues of multi-cultural and anti-racist education.

This was confirmed by the views of Wendy Ridley, County Advisory Teacher for Race Equality, and by evidence from the 'Cumbria Attitude Survey' (2004) and many other sources.

It seemed sensible, therefore, to look for materials that were 'first hand' and readily accessible to teachers in Cumbria. Creative Partnerships commissioned a scoping study to explore what was out there and how it might be used. This work was carried out by Dr Rob David in May 2005, with the help of Cumbria Archive Service, and provides the basis for this pack. At the same time, the study indicated that there were also resources and opportunities, provided by museums, archives and other organisations further afield, which were available to Cumbrian teachers. Information about these is also included in this pack. Other creative events and supporting activities associated with the archival material will be offered to schools during 2007.

The year 2007 marks the bicentenary of the 'Abolition of the British trade in Enslaved People' and, therefore, it became the catalyst to bring together and launch this resource. However, references to Cumbria's involvement in the slave trade in the eighteenth century might also be seen in the broader context of today's ongoing use of 'slaves' locally (Chinese cockle pickers in Morecambe Bay), nationally (East European girls in the sex trade in UK cities) and abroad (child labour in the clothing industry of several countries). These are issues that impact on the young people of Cumbria today and inform their understandings and attitudes. This is not simply a 'history' resource. (See Section 3: Slavery as a Contemporary Issue.)

As well as the records and artefacts, the dialect, family and place names of Cumbria reveal that this part of the British Isles has hosted waves of immigrants - some invaders, some enticed, some enslaved - for thousands of years. We believe that we should use our knowledge of this rich heritage to inform creative approaches to a 21st century curriculum because, as a Year 8 student in a Whitehaven school suggested, "slavery means something to us today because it shows what our ancestors did or made people do years back. It shows how wrong it is and that we don't want it to happen again."

Andy Mortimer, Director, Creative Partnerships, Cumbria 1st January 2007