Windrush Day 2025

Games without wires

11am-4pm | Ocean Map

Try out a variety of board games, big and small, with the Caribbean Social Forum.

Migration Museum pop-up: Story sharing

11am-4pm | Drop-in | ReThink space 

Join the Migration Museum team to add your migration story to our collection and be a part of shaping the story of how migration shapes Britain.

The Migration Museum has a collection of over 7,000 migration stories shared with us on hand-written discs by visitors to the museum over the past 10 years. Whether your story starts with ‘I migrated here’, ‘one of my grandparents migrated here’ or perhaps ‘someone in my family emigrated from here’, we would love for you to leave as few or as many words as you’d like!  

Many of our discs tell stories of the Windrush generation, and we will bring some of these along on the day for visitors to learn from. We hope to add to this collection and particularly encourage anyone with stories of themselves or family who have untold stories to come along. The Empire Windrush carried passengers of Caribbean, Polish and East Asian descent - do you have more stories to share with us?

Migration Museum pop-up: Make a boat!  

11am-4pm | Drop-in | ReThink space 

Drop-in for this self-guided boat-making activity! Relax on your own, chat with friends or the team, and have a go at crafting your own boat. The activity offers space to get creative, reflect on the journey many people made to Britain, and an opportunity to celebrate the vast and continuing impact that the Windrush generation has had on life in Britain for all of us. 

Open and accessible to all ages and abilities.

Tracing your ancestors: Caribbean family history workshop

11am-4pm | Caird Library and Archive

Come to the Caird Library and Archive for help getting started in your search for your family. We'll show you how to use the passenger lists digitised on Ancestry, various records from parish churches in the Caribbean, and crew lists and Merchant Navy records.

Staff will also provide suggestions on how to find family history records in archives across the UK. There will be maps, prints, drawings and rare books from the collection on display.

Before HMT Empire Windrush: The Almanzora

11am-4pm | Figurehead space in Ocean Court

An opportunity to view a model of this vessel and hear more about its 1947 journey from the Caribbean to Southampton, with Simon Stephens (Curator of Ship Models and Small Boats) and Helen Mears (Head of Curatorship and Research).

Character actor: Pearl Morris

11.30am, 1.30pm and 3.30pm | Voyagers Gallery

Meet Pearl Morris, a Caribbean woman who travelled to Britain in 1948 on the Empire Windrush, a passenger liner that brought one of the first large groups of post-war West Indians to the United Kingdom. 

A matron of the Windrush Generation, Pearl will tell you what life was like for a Caribbean woman in Britain in the 50s, and how she made this island her home.

Talk: An introduction to Caribbean family history at the Caird Library and Archive

11-11.30am | Lecture Theatre

Discover original documents, books, maps and more held by the Caird Library and Archive that will expand the story of your Windrush family’s journey to Britain. The talk will cover searching for digitised items, getting the most out of the object, library and archive catalogues, and how to order items to see in person. We will also briefly discuss how to access passenger lists and Merchant Navy/crew list records.

Workshop: Liming at the Museum

11am-1pm and 2-4pm | Atlantic Worlds Gallery 

From plantation inventories of slaves to letters written by Marcus Garvey, the National Maritime Museum has a variety of materials speaking to the deeply embedded and complicated relationship between Britain and the Caribbean.

Through a series of workshops led by Jeremiah Brown, Liming at the Museum offers Caribbean elders the opportunity to engage with the Museum's archive. Through poetry and storytelling, elders will speak on and shape the narrative of their history and heritage. This session will be a relaxed gathering in the Atlantic Worlds Gallery with music and activities. Come ready to lime, come ready to speak your mind.

In reflection with Griffi & Rosie: Looking back at their artist residency ‘Retelling Windrush’

12.45-1.15pm: 20-minute talk and 10-minute Q&A | Lecture Theatre

"As the first artists-in-residence with the National Windrush Museum and Royal Museums Greenwich, we used the studio to explore the Windrush generation's legacy through art. Our work focused on amplifying community stories, creating a welcoming space for the Caribbean diaspora, and addressing the historical gap in representation. The studio became an organic archive of objects and memories, reimagining the Windrush experience through creative mediums."

Windrush in song

1-2.30pm | Group Space

Come and relive songs from your homeland. From folk and gospel to reggae and calypso, sing songs from your childhood, songs that helped shape your life, songs that kept you in touch with home, or songs that encouraged you as you forged a new life in a ‘strange land’.

From Jim Reeves and Sam Cooke to Desmond Decker and John Holt, come and take a trip down memory lane with CeCelia Wickham Anderson.

Talk: Tilbury Bridge Walkway of Memories

2.45-4.30pm | Lecture Theatre

Tilbury Bridge Walkway of Memories is an outdoor art and sound installation conceived and created by artist EVEWRIGHT and curated by Evewright Arts. The artworks are installed on 432 panes of glass, adorning one of the walkways that passengers of the Empire Windrush first walked across when they arrived at the port of Tilbury in Essex in 1948. Come along to this talk to learn more about this installation dedicated to the people of the Windrush Generation.

About Evewright Arts: We are passionate to seek out, find and preserve untold Black British stories from the diaspora using visual arts. We value the importance of our community telling their stories in their own voice.