The statue of the slave trader Edward Colston has gone on display in Bristol, almost a year to the day since it was dragged from its plinth by Black Lives Matter protesters and thrown into Bristol harbour. Daubed with red and blue graffiti, and damaged so it can longer stand upright, the 19th-century bronze memorial has been displayed at the M Shed museum. Visitors will see it lying supine on a wooden stand alongside placards from the protest on 7 June 2020 and a timeline of events. On that day, chanting crowds roared and cheered as the statue was pulled down with ropes and dragged through the city to the harbourside. It was pushed into the waters from Pero’s Bridge, which is named in honour of Pero Jones, an enslaved man who lived and died in the city. Four days later, the statue was recovered from the bottom of the harbour by Bristol city council. It was put into storage before months of work to clean and preserve it. Four people are due to stand trial at Bristol crown court in December over the pulling down of the statue. They have pleaded not guilty to charges of criminal damage. Colston’s legacy had for a long time been controversial in Bristol, the south-west’s most multicultural area. The city’s wealth was built on the profits of the triangle trade, which kidnapped Africans and transported them to the Americas as slaves, then shipped the cotton and sugar they produced there to Britain to fuel the industrial revolution. The We Are Bristol History commission, set up last September in response to the pulling down of the Colston statue, is consulting the public on what should happen to it next. Options include removing the statue from public view entirely, creating a museum or exhibition about the transatlantic slave trade, or restoring the statue to its plinth. Dr Shawn Sobers, an associate professor at the University of the West of England and part of the commission, told PA Media that the effects of the statue being pulled down “ricocheted” across the UK and the world. Nearly 70 tributes to slave traders, colonialists and racists across the UK have been removed since last summer’s BLM protests, according to a Guardian analysis. Sobers said: “We know this isn’t an isolated incident, we know that there are statues across the world that celebrate slavers. At the same time, the anti-racist movement isn’t about statues. It’s trying to eradicate racism from society and bring equality where there’s racial disparity which cuts across economic divides. “But statues are a symbol of how seriously our cities in Britain are actually taking these issues.” Sobers described putting the Colston statue on display as an opportunity to tell a wider history and encourage people to speak about it. “It’s been toppled, it’s been laid on its back in a warehouse for a year and we want it to be a very transparent display to say this is how it is, this is what we’re working with, and we want to ask what happens next.” The display at M Shed forms the first part of the public consultation, with a survey also launched for people to provide their views on the future of the statue and of how Bristol’s history is told.