Liverpool comes together for annual Walk of Remembrance

Liverpool will unite once again this summer for the city’s annual Walk of Remembrance, marking Slavery Remembrance Day on Saturday 23 August 2025.

Organised by National Museums Liverpool, the walk will wind through key parts of the city centre, stopping for moments of reflection, live performances and a deeper look at Liverpool’s role in the transatlantic slave trade. The event will finish at the waterfront with a powerful masquerade and libation ceremony.

This year’s commemoration starts on Friday 22 August with the Dorothy Kuya Slavery Remembrance Memorial Lecture at Liverpool Town Hall. The lecture will be delivered by award-winning writer and psychologist Guilaine Kinouani, who will explore the impact of transatlantic slavery on the Kongo Kingdom in a talk titled Remembering without Remembering: the Kongo, enslavement, absence, presence, resistance.

Guilaine’s lecture will highlight how the focus on West Africa has often overshadowed the history and legacy of slavery in Central Africa. She said: “Outside of our conscious awareness, and despite a collective act of forgetting, the Kongo persists. The disavowed enslavement and brutalisation of the region can be felt in the soil that carried millions of trembling and shackled feet.”

Michelle Charters OBE, Head of International Slavery Museum, said: “While our museum is closed for redevelopment, this moment of reflection is more important than ever. The Walk of Remembrance brings colour, music and meaning to the city streets we think we know — but asks us to look again and think deeper.”

Alongside the walk and lecture, author Malik Al Nasir will host a special event at Walker Art Gallery on 23 August to talk about his new book Searching for my Slave Roots. Malik will share the story of tracing his ancestry and the legacy of slavery, privilege and trauma that runs through generations.

Liverpool has marked Slavery Remembrance Day every year since 1999, standing alongside cities around the world on 23 August — the date that commemorates the uprising of enslaved Africans on the island of Saint Domingue, now Haiti, in 1791. The day is a reminder that those forced into slavery were also the agents of their own freedom.

Liverpool’s role in the transatlantic slave trade was huge, responsible for nearly half of Britain’s involvement. Ships left the city’s docks carrying goods to trade for enslaved people, who were forced across the ocean in brutal conditions known as the Middle Passage. Slavery Remembrance Day is a chance to confront that past and its continuing legacy.

Each year, the Dorothy Kuya Slavery Remembrance Memorial Lecture invites leading voices to the city. Previous speakers have included Martin Luther King III, poet Lemn Sissay, historian David Olusoga, and artist Fiona Compton.

This year’s line-up of events includes:

• Dorothy Kuya Slavery Remembrance Memorial Lecture, Friday 22 August, 5.30pm at Liverpool Town Hall
• Walk of Remembrance, Saturday 23 August, 12 noon, starting at Liverpool Playhouse Theatre
• Searching For My Slave Roots with Malik Al Nasir, Saturday 23 August, 5-7pm at Walker Art Gallery

For the full programme and details of creative commissions, visit the website.

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