Description:Introduction
This exhibition offers an insight into the experience of African migrants in Birmingham since 1950. In the sixty years since 1950 Birmingham has changed beyond all recognition physically, economically, socially and culturally. Migration from Africa has played an important role in these changes and this exhibition offers an insight into the experiences and contributions of African migrants in Birmingham during this period.
The exhibition presents some of the outcomes of The African Heritage Initiative, a unique project, funded by the Heritage Lottery Fund, which has conducted extensive research to uncover and narrate the previously untold stories of African migrants: why they – or their parents - came to Birmingham; their experiences when they arrived; their subsequent settlement experiences; and their achievements and contributions within their adopted society as well as their aspirations for the future.
The project’s aim was to encourage African migrants, young and old, who are living and working in Birmingham, to share their stories in interviews, through which an historical record of modern African migration, and the integration of African migrants in Birmingham, could be developed. The project aimed to build upon existing research and attempted to develop a picture of modern African migrants and their integration in Birmingham in order to enable common and divergent experiences among the African Diaspora to be identified and understood.
The stories recorded through the African Heritage Initiative, some of which are presented here in this exhibition, are important, not just because of their ability to inspire and empower, but also because of the risk that the heritage and history they reveal may be lost. There has been no previous attempt to collate the heritage of recent African migrants in Birmingham on the scale attempted through this project. The archive that has been collected represents a unique and important record, expressing the values, attitudes, and thoughts which together form the history of the past experience of Africans in Birmingham, and it is crucial that these are recorded and preserved if we, and future generations, are to properly understand a heritage, which has been both central to the recent development of Birmingham and also a microcosm of the wider experience of African migration during the past sixty years.
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Email: research@caassuk.org
Contact name: Frederick Ebot Ashu