A Black History Month Community Conversation

Joseph Emidy: Looking at the PortraitA Black History Month Community Conversation

Thursday 29 October 2026 | 7pm

In partnership with Cornwall Museum & Art Gallery, Truro

Free | All welcome

What can a portrait tell us about a person — and what can it tell us about the time in which they lived?

Join Caroline Gayle-Dunne and Maggie for a reflective community conversation exploring the only known contemporary image of Joseph Emidy, the formerly enslaved West African musician who made his home in Cornwall.

The portrait is an important historical record of Emidy, but it also raises questions. Who created the image? Why was he represented in this way? How were Black and formerly enslaved people depicted during this period? And how should we look at historical images today when the person being represented may not have had control over how they were seen?

This isn't a lecture, and you don't need any previous knowledge of Joseph Emidy to take part. We'll look at the portrait together, hear some of the history surrounding it and create space for different observations, questions and perspectives.

Why have this conversation?

Black History Month gives us an opportunity not only to discover people whose stories have been overlooked, but to think about how those stories have been recorded and passed down to us.

Museums, portraits and archives help shape what we understand about the past. But historical records aren't neutral: what survives, who created it, whose perspective was recorded and how people were represented all influence the stories we inherit.

That doesn't mean difficult images should simply disappear. It means we can look at them more closely, ask better questions and add context and voices that may have been missing from the original record.

For IWN, these conversations matter because whose stories are visible, and how people are represented within those stories, still matters.

FREE | ALL WELCOME

Description supplied by the event organiser.