Medicine, Myth, Water and Spirit (Part 1)

A three-part workshop series exploring the migration of African Diasporic spiritual traditions at Royal Museums Greenwich

Medicine, Myth, Water and Spirit is a three-part workshop series exploring the migration of African Diasporic spiritual traditions by responding to the collections of the National Maritime Museum and Queen’s House. We will discover how spiritual knowledge and objects have migrated across the Atlantic through the African Diaspora, how folk stories have kept memory alive and how spiritual folk medicine knowledge has remained important.

Each workshop combines storytelling and an opportunity to get creative, and can be booked together or separately if you only want to attend one.

Workshop One - Medicine (24 January)

In workshop one, we will take a look at the spiritual uses of plants and herbs found within the Museum’s collections.

Many of these plants travelled across the Atlantic as simple commodities yet also held deep spiritual significance. We will learn how plant knowledge was utilised as both medicine and resistance movements throughout the African Diaspora.

We’ll get creative by making medicine pouches and tea blends with spiritual significance that relates to you.

Workshop Two - Myth (7 March)

We’ll begin with the Juju pot found in the Atlantic Worlds gallery, among other ceremonial items in the collection, using these as a starting point to explore the idea that sacred or ceremonial items carry intention.

Across many African and diasporic traditions, objects are thought to hold protective energies or specific intentions. We will look at how myth and storytelling is embedded within objects themselves.

At the end of this session, we will be creating our own meaningful objects filled with intention in a crafting workshop.

Workshop Three - Water and Spirit (28 March)

In this final workshop we will learn about shared water myths and deities such as Iemanjá, Osun, and River Mumma, figures that appear across continents under different names and forms.

Discover how water holds memory and how rivers and oceans carried both trauma and survival while learning how spiritual traditions adapted across forced migration.

The creative component will be a painting session inspired by African vernacular forms, allowing participants to respond intuitively to water as a living spirit.