The idea
For two years, we worked across Walsall recording the people who came here from somewhere else, and the people whose families have been here for generations. The project built film sets, made new photographic work, and recorded first-person accounts that don't exist in any archive. That work was funded by the National Lottery Heritage Fund. It's on the walls at Walsall Art Gallery now.
This book is a keepsake. It's how the work goes home with people.
What We Carried to Walsall pulls everything the project produced into a single hardback. Photographs. Testimonies. The methodology behind how trust was built across very different communities. Free digital edition lives permanently at reindmig.com. Printed on FSC-certified recycled paper with vegetable inks.
What we'll deliver
- 200 hardback copies distributed free to Walsall schools, libraries and community centres
- Free digital edition permanently available at reindmig.com — open access for all
- Community stories from Walsall's South Asian foundry communities preserved in print for future generations
Why it's a great idea
The people in this book handed over the parts they normally don't: the disorientation of arrival, the years of feeling watched, the moment something shifted. Several of the contributors are in their 80s. These accounts don't exist anywhere else, and they won't be recorded twice.
The book also gives the people who made it something solid. Walsall College students worked on it. Families gave photographs that had never left a drawer. The publication names every contributor and documents the method. It sits on a shelf when the exhibition comes down.
That's what we're asking you to fund. The thing that stays.
Steps to get it done
- Commission book design and finalise content for publication (July 2026)
- Complete copy editing and proofreading of all text content (September 2026)
- Send to printer; produce 200 hardback copies on FSC-certified recycled paper (October 2026)
- Produce digital edition (PDF and web-accessible version) for reindmig.com (November 2026)
- Distribute free copies to Walsall libraries, schools, community centres, and contributors (November 2026)
- Host community launch event in Walsall to celebrate the publication (December 2026)
