Windrush: Rare images on display in Woodbridge art trail

Rare images of people who arrived in Britain on HMT Windrush can be seen in a Suffolk art trail this summer.

Howard Grey's lost Windrush photographs can be seen in nine venues as part of the Woodbridge Windrush Art Trail.

Festival co-founder Ben Osborne said as far as he knew they "hadn't been on walls before" and it was a "unique opportunity" to view them.

The trail also features John Ferguson's contemporary Black Suffolk photo portraits.

On 22 June 1948, the Windrush arrived at Tilbury Docks in Essex - the first stop for the British Caribbean citizens who had been encouraged to migrate, before they travelled on to London.

Grey's pictures capture one of the last Windrush arrivals at London's Waterloo station in 1962.

Originally shot on damaged film, the unseen negatives were stored for 60 years until new digital techniques made development possible.

Mr Osborne said it was a rare chance to see them before they become part of a permanent exhibition in a new National Railway Museum hall next year.

"There's been quite a lot written about them, but as far as I know they haven't actually been on walls," he said.

He added it was "amazing and slightly coincidental" that the images were being shown as part of Woodbridge Festival.

A visual artist that he was involved with lived next door to Grey and "connected them".

"It was one of those fortuitous things," Mr Osbourne said.

"He didn't have [large] prints of them so we got them made... it does remind you that the creative world feels quite small."

Also being exhibited is John Ferguson's Black Suffolk - a contemporary series of portraits of Suffolk's current African-Caribbean community.

The images, which were first seen in Ipswich in 2021, explore the concept of "home".

Woodbridge Festival is hosting a summer-long programme celebrating the Windrush anniversary, which includes live music performances by Aswad and Soul II Soul's Jazzie B in September.

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