Runaways London: Historical Research, Archival Silences and Creative Voices

Abstract This article explores how popular historical knowledge and understanding can be deepened by collaboration between historians, creative artists, and editors, publishers and those who support and develop the creative arts. Historical research into enslaved people who escaped in seventeenth- and eighteenth-century London reveals much about their enslavers but very little about the enslaved people themselves. However, archival gaps and silences can be imaginatively filled, and those who engage with the historically inspired creative work can explore the nexus of historical research and artistic creativity. In this article the authors (a historian and two members of the creative industry) detail how their ‘Runaways London’ collaboration developed, and how the work of poets and artists, premised on extensive historical research, deepens our understanding of race and slavery in British history, achieving something that is beyond the reach of historical research and writing alone.