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Signs and banners demanding racial justice from the recent Black Lives Matter peaceful protest are being added to the island's historic archive.
So far, Jersey Heritage has collected four signs from the People's Park demonstration, and are hoping to collect many more.
The appeal is part of Jersey Heritage’s ‘Documenting Coronavirus’ project which aims to record what life was really like for islanders – both positive and negative – during the pandemic in the form of blogs, videos, diaries, artwork and more.
“Part of what we do is capture the stories and the all the experiences from our community,” Melissa Rodrigues, Photographer and Visitor Services Co-Ordinator, explained.
Pictured: Jersey Heritage asked islanders to document their experience of the pandemic.
“We reached out to a lot of different community groups, parish halls, the Youth Service, schools and community places of worship and asked them to contact their members and ask them to document how they are feeling whilst the pandemic is affecting us.
“It’s easy to capture what the government is saying because it is easy to access but we also want to capture people’s feelings and ideas to give us more of an idea of how it is affecting people."
The appeal has already received some interest from islanders who have shared pages from their journals as well as a “lovely mix of poem, songs photos and videos”.
Pictured: Hundreds of islanders gathered at People's Park for the peaceful protest. (Melissa Rodrigues Photography)
While receiving scanned pages of journals and photographs, Ms Rodrigues said Jersey Heritage is keen to keep hold of “the actual tangible objects” to have a selection of items they could use in the future to educate people about the current period.
This is where their appeal to gather the cardboard and paper signs hundreds of islanders created for the peaceful protest for racial justice which took place in People’s Park on 6 June as the Black Lives Matter movement intensified over the globe, comes into play.
Organised by Jude Kriwald and Nicola Twiston-Davies, alongside a number of local community groups, the protest saw hundreds of islanders kneel for eight minutes and 46 seconds to mark the death of US citizen George Floyd, who lost his life after being arrested and pinned to the ground for that length of time by Mineappolis police officer Derek Chauvin, who has since been charged with second-degree murder.
Pictured: Jersey Heritage is seeking to preserve the signs from the protest for future generations. (Melissa Rodrigues Photography)
So far, Jersey Heritage has received four signs from the protest and is hoping to collect even more to include in its collections.
“The signs from the peaceful protest are part of the bigger picture,” Ms Rodrigues said.
“The peaceful protest is a massive element we would like to include. Protesting at this time is a big thing and it’s a passionate topic people are experiencing right now.
“It’s really important to capture that as well.”
Pictured: The signs will be photographed and kept in Jersey Heritage's collections. (Melissa Rodrigues Photography)
“It’s been a historic year, so many things have happened, so many things have changed,” she added.
“A massive element of this is the community objects. We have records in paper as well as online resources, but it’s good to have the actual tangible as well.
“Journals, banners are all being collected so that we have items to educate people on.
"It’s all part of modern age history! We want to get as many people as we can to donate their cardboards signs and paper signs as it would be massively beneficial for us.”
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