The Making Histories project opened up discussions between people of different ages and cultural backgrounds. Questions of identity, culture, community, Britishness and the ways that migration can contribute positively to local communities, were all at the heart of this project. You can find a migration story from the Find a Story page by selecting a theme from the words at the top of the page or by using the map at the bottom of the page.
We chose to work in Leicester, Sheffield and Cardiff and later Manchester and London as, like many other parts of Britain, they have rich histories of migration. The diverse population of each city today reflects that history. Leicester has a well-established Black and Asian population and will soon become the first city in the UK to have a predominantly non-white population. Sheffield, a city with a long industrial history, has a relatively small Black and Minority Ethnic population today but in the post-war period was home to many immigrants who came to work in the factories there. The port city of Cardiff has had a dynamic history of migration since the nineteenth century when ships would arrive from all over the British Empire to transport coal and other goods. Manchester has a rich history of migration associated with industrialisation and reindustrialisation, and in London we worked with Tower Hamlets and Greenwich (North and South of the river) which provide rich but divergent images of empire and trade.
Whilst the students who participated in our project were able to interview a number of people from a broad range of backgrounds and communities we wanted to provide migration information about the vast array of those who have journeyed to and settled in the first three we worked in; Cardiff, Leicester and Sheffield. With that in mind we have produced three community booklets called Migration Stories which highlight in a little more detail, the journeys made to these cities, by people born in different parts of the world and some of the reasons for making them. You can use these to provide some context for the interviews conducted by our young community historians, as they contain historical information, statistics and interview quotes relating to each of the three cities. Click on the thumbnail below to download the community booklets.
