Us

Over the next five years from 2022, BACKLIT​‘s work has four key areas of focus: Mental Health, Equality, Diversity and Inclusion, Environmental and Digital.

These key areas will flow throughout our organisation, programme, projects, staff, recruitment, governance, policies and frameworks.

Each focus area will help us deepen our research and impact to continue to provide valuable and relevant public engagement, exhibitions, learning and membership programmes.

Originally a flourishing textile company established in 1872 by Samuel Morley, our building has a rich past of creativity, manufacturing, and production.

Samuel Morley, described as an entrepreneur, philanthropist, Member of Parliament, social reformer, and was a model employer and ardent abolitionist, originally commissioned Alfred House to be built. He was an English woollen manufacturer and political radical who pioneered progressions in industry, human rights, anti-slavery, and adult education.

Morley, an advocate of the anti-slavery movement in Nottingham and London, supported and funded Josiah Henson (a ​‘freed’ fugitive American Slave), to publish a book about his experience of Slavery and the Underground Railroad. The book changed history and is the inspiration behind Harriet Beecher Stowe’s ​‘Uncle Tom’s Cabin’. BACKLIT has since developed ​‘Morley Threads Archive’, an online resource.