Peace History and Museums - A Peace History Conference

The Peace Museum, in its new home in Salts Mill, Saltaire (Bradford MDC), is hosting a Peace History conference, Saturday 9th November 2024.

The all-day event (10 am – 5 pm) continues a series of Peace History Conferences that was initiated in 2007 and sponsored by the Movement for the Abolition of War (MAW). The conferences aim to help develop a culture of peace by raising awareness of individuals, movements, ideas and initiatives from all periods of history concerned with promoting peace, overcoming violence, and abolishing war. Several of the early conferences were organised in cooperation with, and hosted by, the Imperial War Museum in London (most recently in 2014 and 2017). Other conferences have been held in Manchester (2015, People’s History Museum), Leeds (2016, Leeds City Museum), and Cardiff (2018, Temple of Peace). More information about MAW and reports of these conferences is available at https://abolishwar.net/about-us/history-of-maw/ and https://abolishwar.net/what-we-do/peace-history/

After more than 25 years in Bradford city centre, the Peace Museum re-opened in August 2024 in more accessible, much larger and prestigious premises in Salts Mill in Saltaire, a UNESCO World Heritage Site. Since UNESCO is dedicated to education and the development of a culture of peace, the new location could hardly be bettered. It remains the country’s only museum of its kind, dedicated to telling the history of peace and the peace movement. This is a story that is largely absent from history teaching and textbooks, and also from the many war museums and museums devoted to the armed forces. Bradford is also where the International Network of Museums for Peace (INMP) was founded at a conference in 1992. About INMP, see https://sites.google.com/view/inmp-museums-for-peace/

MAW was founded at the start of the 21st century by Bruce Kent, the long-time leader of the peace movement in the UK, and Sir Joseph Rotblat, 1995 Nobel peace laureate. Artefacts related to both are among the displays in the Peace Museum. It also shows artefacts related to the subject of several conference presentations such as on conscientious objection, peace symbols, Hiroshima, and the world’s first peace museums (established in 1902). Taking place on the eve of Remembrance Sunday, the conference highlights efforts to resist, prevent and abolish war going back to the pre-World War I era.