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Routes to Roots: Celebrating South Asian Heritage (2025)
In 2025, Routes to Roots entered its third and final year, culminating in an exhibition at Bradford City Library that opens on 6 October. This part of the creative heritage project places Bradford at its heart while continuing to honour and explore South Asian stories across Sheffield, Croydon, and beyond.
BRADFORD EXHIBITION
Date: 6 October – 1 November
Time: Open Monday–Saturday during library hours
Fri, Sat, Mon: 9 am–4.45 pm
Tue, Wed, Thu: 9 am–6.45 pm
Where: Bradford City Library (BD1 1SD)
Centenary Square, 9 Aldermanbury, Bradford
Free entry
Step into Bradford City Library and discover an exhibition that is more than something to look at – it’s something to journey through.
This celebratory showcase brings together textiles, visual art works, poetry, and film.
From embroidered scarves and block-printed runners to chalked poetry on bookcases and windows, the library will hold fragments of lived experience infused with an eclectic, colourful visual style.
The exhibition highlights work created through participatory workshops at WomenZone, Bradford, since 2022. You’ll find:
- A collaboratively produced embroidered scarf reflecting the relationships between daughters and their mothers
- Intricate artworks exploring identity and coming of age
- A Shalwar Kameez celebrating empowerment and strength
- Large-scale collaborative hand-print and block-printed artworks
- Three original bookworks showcasing the project in each city
And you are invited to add your own voice, tie a tag to the ever-developing story-tree. Share your experience of home, migration, or your sense of identity as part of the story-tree that has travelled with the exhibition, blooming with old and new histories from Croydon and Sheffield, and now continuing in Bradford. Or simply linger with the works and the stories they carry themselves.
The Bradford Women’s Group attending the West Yorkshire Archives Services:
See our videos
Click on the play buttons to view each video
City Highlights
The programme in 2025 brought together performances, exhibitions, and workshops, amplifying the voices of South Asian communities.
Throughout the year, participants shared their final creative work in each city, with highlights presented at Migration Matters Festival, the UK’s largest cultural festival on sanctuary, migration, and refugees. These performances celebrated identity, heritage, and community, while shedding light on previously untold stories.
Sheffield
– Echoes Between Us
Young women from King Ecgbert School explored cultural identity across cities and generations through movement, sound, visual art, and writing. Their work showed how storytelling can shape self-expression and inspire future possibilities.
Facilitators: Nisha Lall and Ethel Mageda
Bradford
– Dressed in Strength
In partnership with WomenZone and Bradford Arts Centre women from Bradford created a vibrant fusion of poetry, fashion, and performance. Led by Aamta Waheed and Sharena Lee Satti, their showcase celebrated female empowerment through spoken word, music, and traditional dress.
Facilitators: Sharena Lee Satti and Aamta Tul Waheedd
Croydon
– Echoes of a Name
Working with Stanley Arts and led by Janet Steel and Rez Kabir, participants developed a moving performance of monologues, songs, and stories. The work honoured the legacies of Anglo-Indian women and the wider South Asian diaspora, blending remembrance with humour and reflection.
Facilitators: Rez Kabir and Janet Steel
Timeline for 2025
Feb 2025
WomenZone participants visit West Yorkshire Archives
January – April 2025
Exhibition at the Millennium Gallery, Sheffield
March 2025
Routes to Roots Lunch Event / Performance at Millennium Gallery, Sheffield
June 2025
Performance at Stanley Arts, Croydon
July 2025
Group performances at Migration Matters Festival, Sheffield
July 2025
The launch of the documentary: Routes to Roots – The Story of the Madras Jazz Group at Migration Matters
July 2025
Performance at WomenZone, Bradford
July 2025
Performance at King Egbert School, Sheffield
October 2025
Exhibition at the Bradford City Library
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creative workshops delivered
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participants reached
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In-person audience/visitors reached online
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Creative heritage products, poetry, storytelling, plays, dance, monologues, textiles, visual art, videos, collage, photographs and audio) created
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Visitor Routes to Roots journeys captured on our exhibition story tree
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Live performances shared
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Films and oral history podcasts made
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Exhibitions
Routes to Roots PowerPoint Learning Resources
Download and view our KS2 and KS3 learning resources:
Partners and Participants
Bradford: WomenZone, Bradford Arts Centre, West Yorkshire Archives Services, Bradford City Library.
Participants: 16+ South Asian women attending WomenZone aged 40-80+
Sheffield: King Ecgbert School, Migration Matters Festival, Sheffield Museums (The Millennium Gallery), Dig Where You Stand and Sheffield City Archives.
Participants: 17 students aged 11-14 from South Asian and Global Majority backgrounds
Croydon: Stanley Arts, Museum of Croydon and Croydon Archives
Participants: 10 members of Anglo-Indian and South Asian Community aged 60-87+
Routes to Roots is made possible with The National Lottery Heritage Fund. Thanks to National Lottery players, we will be able to address key Heritage Lottery outcomes:
- A wider range of people will be involved in heritage
- Heritage will be identified and better explained
- People will have learned about heritage leading to change in ideas and actions
- People will have greater wellbeing
- People will have developed skills
Photographers/Videographers:
Gemma Thorpe
Hector David Rodríguez Manchego
Filmmaker:
Natalie Sloan – Little Red Hen Films