Rachel Emily Taylor
Camberwell College of Arts
Illustrating Pirates: Illustration Consultancy at the National Maritime Museum
Symposium Chair
Keynote Chair: Dan Hicks
Panel Chair: Voice
Panel: Institutions
Royal Museums Greenwich are developing the exhibition Pirates, which will open in 2025, exploring previously underrepresented people involved in piracy. Stories of piracy have captured the attention of the British public for hundreds of years and have been portrayed in literature, film, theatre, and fashion. The images that have shaped the narrative of piracy in Britain are predominantly white and male, which arguably does not reflect the individuals who have been involved in and affected by piracy around the globe. In researching the Pirates exhibition, it became evident to the RMG team that stories were missing from the visual record of piracy, and specifically, the lives of Global Majority communities, LGBTQ+ people and women are not well documented.
The RMG project aims to uncover these stories and communicate them to audiences through illustration interventions that can sit within the Pirates exhibition, and they have commissioned freelance illustrators to respond to a brief and engage with their archive and collections. Rachel Emily Taylor has been employed as an ‘Illustration Consultant’ to work with and alongside the museum team and the commissioned illustrators. This paper explores the dynamics in these working relationships, interests, restrictions, and the potential of ‘illustration consultancy’ in heritage spaces.
Dr Rachel Emily Taylor is a writer, illustrator, and educator based in London (UK) where she is the Course Leader of BA (Hons) Illustration at Camberwell College of Arts, University of the Arts London. Her book Illustration and Heritage (Bloomsbury 2024) argues that the illustrator is a critical figure in the heritage process as they can challenge dominant narratives. She is a consultant on illustration projects in heritage spaces, recently working with Royal Museums Greenwich and Quentin Blake Centre for Illustration. Rachel makes works that involve mis- or underrepresented people from history, with a particular interest in how the past can be reconstructed. As a practitioner, she has worked with the Foundling Museum, the Horniman Museum, the Wellcome Collection, the Brontë Parsonage Museum, the Barnardo's Archive, Bowes Museum, Bishops’ House, and the Museum of Witchcraft and Magic.