At the city’s Great Exhibition of 1904, 57 Somali men, women and children cooked, weaved and danced for visitors
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t was, the posters said, a rare chance to see a “little known but interesting people”: a live display of 57 Somali men, women and children who cooked, weaved and danced for the entertainment of hundreds of thousands of Edwardians who flocked to Yorkshire to see them.
More than 120 years later, this controversial – and, in its time, incredibly popular – show will be revisited in a new exhibition in Bradford that will put Britain’s colonial legacy under the spotlight.
The Somali village is thought to have been one of the most popular and profitable of the attractions at Bradford’s Great Exhibition in 1904, drawing more than 350,000 visitors and helping to fund Cartwright Hall’s civic art collection for decades.
