October 2024 Group of the Month - Windrush in the Far South West
For the month of October 2024, the CAHG awards groups are very happy to announce the group of the month as being Windrush in the Far South West.
About the group
The Box in Plymouth is the city’s museum, art gallery and archive all housed in one building. An initiative by one of its Community Engagement Officers, Tony Davey, is “Culture Club” and this programme sees communities and groups invited into The Box to interrogate its collections through a particular lens. The most recent iteration of the group was designed to allow people from the Global Majority to look at what was there. The group were particularly struck by images from the 1950s showing people of Caribbean ancestry arriving at Millbay Docks in Plymouth. The members of the group had been unaware that this had taken place in Plymouth and became instantly interested in the stories of these arrivals. Did they stay in Plymouth? Did they move elsewhere?
What followed was a period of research, looking at ships logs and passenger lists, looking to establish who had disembarked in Plymouth. While it became obvious that many people had passed through the city on a journey to elsewhere in the UK a significant number had stayed in the city.
We asked did this provide an inspiration for the communities that you wanted to work with?
Yes, we, as members of Culture Club, initiated a small project, with funding from the National Lottery Heritage Fund, to look at immigration into the far South West between the dates of 1948 – 1965. We were interested in the people who had travelled here in that time, those who had moved elsewhere in the UK and those who had stayed in the far South West. We were also very interested in their families and descendants and the communities that had formed.
How have you managed to capture this unique heritage and stories of the people you’ve been looking at?
The project funding enabled us to appoint a paid researcher and a paid film maker to both find the stories of this community and also to interview those who remained or those who were descended from this generation. We collected, and continue to collect oral histories, of people and we ensure these are filmed to provide a unique insight and representation of a community of people.
CAHG are always interested in activities that have beneficial impacts on the physical, mental and social wellbeing of individuals and communities, and when we asked about that we were told that:
From census figures, we know that diversity has traditionally been low in the far South West but those figures are growing and its more important than ever to represent all communities as part of the South West’s heritage. What’s been fascinating is how much has been achieved in a very short time since we discovered the photographs that inspired us. We’ve now collected a number of interviews from people who were often initially a little unsure about speaking to us. Once they have though, they shared powerful, emotionally stories about a sense of belonging (or the challenges of that) and we’ve been able to detect that the stories are often surprisingly similar in terms of both the challenges they faced and their achievements. Many people intended to just come for five years and lots of children were initially left behind, until it became clear that people would be staying for a lot longer.
In terms of representation today and sharing some of these stories, we held a Culture Club Take Over Day on August 17th, where the group took over The Box and that was wonderfully well attended having had over 1,000 visitors, and was very well received.
We asked the group where they go from here:
The project has inspired the creation of a new Community Interest Company – the Cornwall and Devon Creative Collective (CODECC), there has been a film created from the current round of interviews. Which is on display in The Box’s Media Lab Gallery until October 18th and we have a major exhibition taking place in The Box’s Bridge Gallery in January. We feel this is just the beginning.
We’re sure you can see why we’re so happy to be able to acknowledge the wonderful work of the Windrush in the Far South West project and keep an eye on The Box Website to see how work continues to develop and grow.
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