Apna Heritage Archive wins national award.

The Community Archives and Heritage Group (CAHG) held its annual conference at University College, London on 11 July 2017. Black Country Visual Arts cic won the ' The Best New Group' for the Apna Heritage Archive. The judges commented: “The Apna Heritage Archive run by Black Country Visual Arts (BCVA) is an outstanding example of collaboration capturing vitally important local heritage, in this case photographs and memorabilia on the migration of South Asian Punjabis to Wolverhampton from the 1960s to 1980s. The project has a strong educational element, including local schools (and the teaching of photography) and Wolverhampton University. We noted the involvement of a Gurdwara, the city council and others, as well as the supportive role of the Heritage Lottery Fund (HLF). It is great to see HLF becoming more involved in community archives, and we hope that this presages a more strategic approach to the sector.”

"BCVA are delighted to receive this recognition from colleagues in the archives and records sector. It is testament to the energy and commitment of everyone involved in the Apna Heritage Archive: members of the local community, our local partners and, of course, the support and help provided by the Heritage Lottery Fund."

The Community Archives and Heritage Group (CAHG) Awards are organised, judged and presented by the Community Archives and Heritage Group, a special interest section of the Archives and Records Association (UK & Ireland), the main professional body representing archivists, records managers and archive conservators in Britain and Ireland. For more on the ARA, see www.archives.org.uk

Black Country Visual Arts wins national award for ‘The Best New Archive Group’ 2017

Apna Heritage Archive reaches a milestone with 1000th archived image.

We have reached a milestone with our 1000th image archived on our digital database! Archiving is no small feat as it requires a lot of attention to detail in obtaining information from participants who allow us to scan their pictures. Our 1000th image pictured here is from our volunteer Salgram Dass, a powerful portrait of family of his father and mother Sarwan and Amro Dass and their first child sister Kanta. The image below tells a forgotten story of where many Punjabi migrants came to live in Wolverhampton from 1960s onwards. This photo was taken on Inkerman St, in the Heath Town area. The area is still synonymous for where new migrants live today. So we're glad we achieved a milestone, only 1000 more images to go! Phew!?

Amro Dass, Kanta Dass and Sarwan Dass on Inkerman Street, Heath Town, Wolverhampton 1961

St Chad's Asian Ladies Group

We were delighted to host the St Chad's Asian Women's group at the Apna Heritage Archive. We taxied them in from their community centre and response was good with a small number from around 20 ladies bringing images with them. We were delighted as they brought fantastic images from 1960s-80s perfect for the archive! There was a lot of positive comments as now that most had seen the archive for themselves were better to understand what we at Black Country Visual Arts CIC wanted to achieve for our archive funded by Heritage Lottery Fund. Further to this we had received an invite to go back to the group and talk with the ladies individually to gather even more photos! Special thanks to Mrs Suraksha Asar and Mrs Kanchan Jain leaders of the group for helping arrange the visit to our archive space. 

St Chad's Asian Ladies group visit to the Apna Heritage Archive 

St Chad's Asian Ladies group learn to browse the archive physically and online.

The All Saints ladies group 'Mel Jool' visit the archive space.

We recently had a visit from the Mel Jool group from All Saints community centre. A majority of the group were away on their annual trips to India but we still had a strong interest and participation in our project. Mrs Bhatia had a carefully looked after archive of hundreds of images covering 3 decades from the Bilston area of Wolverhampton. She was keen to participate before also travelling to India! We also met Mrs Dhanjal a clay relief artist originally from India and now settled in Wolverhampton. Mrs Dhanjal has exhibited both here and abroad and is trully a very unique and talanted artirst.

Photograph of a clay relief by Mrs Ranjit Dhanjal taken on an archive home visit. 

Supriya and Mrs Dhanjal delve through the archived images online.

A photographic scoop for the Apna Heritage Archive!

We are proud to have a good number of images given to us by the generosity of Mr. Salgaram Dass for the Apna Heritage Archive. I met Mr Dass as he usually parks his car right outside my house to drop off of his children to a school here in Wolverhampton . As I get to know this very articulate and intelligent man he is instantly smitten with our work. Salgaram bought me negatives and then also learned skills and our protocols in scanning these amazing photos that depict the early years of life, living in Inkerman Street, Heath Town, Wolverhampton c 1960s. The vast majority of images here are taken by his father an ardent photographer. I restored and edited a few of these here and personally I find them nostalgic of a bygone age of innocence in the Black Country. Even more than that they are photographers dream and an amazing scoop for our archive in terms of telling the story of individuals and integration to life in Wolverhampton. There's more to come from this set of images we now have in our possession!

Mr Dass, his wife and his family with their first car c1961

Various Images around Inkerman st, Wolverhampton  c1964.

Portraits taken by Mr Dass around Inkerman St, Heath Town, Wolverhampton c1961

Photos of neighbours and friends around Inkerman St, Wolverhampton c1961.

Themes developing from Apna Heritage Archive

The Apna Heritage Archive is now starting to develop exciting themes through the collection of images. These will be an important part of our archive to reference images for research purposes and they also seemingly create a story of their own from within our collection circa 1960s-80s. In future we will be able to cross reference single word search items online, enjoy a couple of themes here ‘Bhaji on the Beach’ or ‘First Cars’. You can follow other themes available on a regular basis via our twitter handle @apna_heritage.

Working with two new community groups for Apna Heritage Archive

BCVA has started working with two new community groups from All Saints and Blakenhall on the Apna Heritage Archive project. We took along some of our archive prints to showcase the collection so far and introduced the project to the ladies. A keen interest was shown by both groups and we look forward to further visits and hopefully more photographs for the archive!

Ladies from the All saints group recognized people in the prints.

Humjoli Ladies Group visit Apna Heritage Achive

It was great to see the Humjoli Ladies Group visit the archive space at Guru Teg Bahadur Gurdwara in Blakenhall. They were really exited to see  prints of some of the archived material and the display of items collected from participants. This was a great opportunity to see some of their own photographs and some of the group had even brought along more photographs to archive for the project. The collection of prints started to bring back memories and stories from the 60's and 70's and early migration to Wolverhampton.

The ladies were great with the touchscreen computer!

New photos to archive.......

Talking about the good old days!

Bilston's Ek Onkar and Ekta Sangat ladies group participate in Apna Heritage Archive

It as been a pleasure working with new participants at Bilston Community Centre for the Apna Heritage Archive. The ladies have been digging out their old images for the archive, even storm Doris couldn't keep them away from their regular meeting last week. You can see above a group portrait we took after one of the yoga sessions. We look forward the meeting them soon and discovering more new archive material. 

Meeting with the Humjoli Ladies Group at Dunstall Hill Community Centre

Another great meeting and discussion with the ladies at Humjoli. It was great to catch up with one of our project partners to encourage further participation and to talk to new members about heritage, archiving and how to get involved. We look forward to the groups visit to our archive space in the coming weeks.

Darshan Kaur Jandhu at Humjoli 

Apna Heritage Archive at the Sikh Survey launch

We were honored to be invited to the the Sikh Survey launch at the University of Wolverhampton by Dr Opinderjit Takhar, head of Religious Studies at the University.  It was a great opportunity to meet up with possible participants for the Apna Heritage Project. We had a very positive response from the visitors who very excited by the archive and how important it was for the town and region as a whole. 

Pupils at St Luke's talk about their own personal archive.

Year five pupils at St Luke's got to talk about their own personal archive bio and share their archive photograph with the school. There was a great deal of excitement as the pupils looked for their portraits as you can see in the image above. After reading out their own hand written information sheet they got to file away the information along with their photograph into the new St Luke's archive box. The children were really positive about the archive sessions and have enjoyed learning about our project and the importance of archive and heritage.

The children got to share their archive bio and photograph with classmates.

St Luke's archive project continues with new portraits.

One again it was great to visit St Luke's for another workshop. The children put into practice what they have learnt so far about recording their own archive stories. BCVA took portraits of the year five pupils in national dress or home clothes whilst the children recorded information to go with the photographs. We look forward to going back next week to complete the archive with year five. A big thank you for St Luke's for make a great effort! 

BCVA at Wolves Archives Local History Fair

BCVA were invited by Wolverhampton City Archives to attend this years Local History Fair to share their ground breaking HLF funded Apna Heritage Archive project. The project is documenting Punjabi migration to Wolverhampton form 1960 to 1989 through the collection of photographs and ephemera. We had a great turnout and it was great to see such positive response from all members of the community for our project.

Browsing our online archive!

St Luke's primary school learn about archives

BCVA visited St Luke's primary school to talk about the Apna Heritage Archive. The year five pupils discovered their own archive of photographs and documents going back to the 1930's! The children also learned how to take a portrait and gather information about the subject in order to build their own archive.

Jon shows the children the strong rooms at Wolverhampton City Archives

A group of 60 children visited Wolverhampton City Archives as part of BCVA's Apna Heritage Archive project. The children learned about the value of archives, history of Blakenhall and St. Luke's School. Along with a visit to the strong rooms and taking photographs of the buildings architecture conservator Jon and Guy shared their knowledge with the children and staff. A big thank you to all the staff at Wolverhampton City Archives and St Luke's primary school.

The children discover the secret cupboard!

HLF funded Apna Heritage Archive takes to the road.....

BCVA are currently on a marketing drive to promote the Apna Heritage Archive, a project supported by Heritage Lottery Fund. After appearing in various publications including ARC magazine and Mann Jeet Weekly we have been in the heart of local community promoting the value of heritage that our project brings. Along the way we have met many individuals that are keen to get involved and are digging out the old albums as we speak! be sure to visit our website and Instagram page to see the archive build up. 

Apna Heritage Archive makes news in ARC magazine

BCVA's Apna Heritage Archive project makes it into the September issue of ARC magazine. ARC is a monthly magazine for members of the Archives and Records Association. It's really positive news that our project as been featured in a magazine read by people and organisations in the record keeping profession. 

ARC September issue PDF

Apna Heritage Archive at Tiranga 2016

BCVA attended Jaivant Patel Dance's Tiranga 2016 event at the heart of the community in Blakenhall Wolverhampton. It was a great opportunity to promote the Apna Heritage Archive to our target audience and participants. We had a positive response from the local community and met many new participants for the archive project. 

BCVA would like to thank Jaivant Patel and all the staff at Tiranga 2016 for their support. 

St Luke's visit to Wolverhampton City Archives

A group of 30 children visited Wolverhampton City Archives as part of BCVA's Apna Heritage Archive project. The children learned about the value of archives and the history of the Molineux Hotel building. Along with a visit to the strong rooms and taking photographs of the buildings architecture conservator Jon Everall and City Archivist Heidi McIntosh shared their knowledge with the children and staff. A big thank you to all the staff at Wolverhampton City Archives for an exciting and historical afternoon!

Pupils at St Luke's primary school learn the value of archives

BCVA once again teamed up with St Luke's C of E primary school in Blakenhall to talk about our new Apna Heritage Archive project. Over the course of 4 workshops they will learn about the value of archives and how to create their very own archive made up of portraits and information about themselves.  The children learned how to take a portrait through a practical game of 'human camera' and portrait session. Over the next few workshops we will visit the Wolverhampton City Archives to learn more about archival practice and take new portraits in national dress. A big thank you to all the staff and children for their hard work and enthusiasm for the project. Apna Heritage Archive is funded by Heritage Lottery Fund.