Ancestry is the word for where and from whom you come to be here now. SEMA is a collective of people whose backgrounds and lineages, our roots and our routes, have found us one way or another in Shropshire/Telford and Wrekin and part of what we do is tell those stories: they are the stories that belong to our grandparents and our grandchildren.

It was for this sake that SEMA joined up with the Windrush Exhibition Telford & Wrekin at The Hive Shrewsbury creative venue, October 2021, hosting a preliminary gallery for the grand opening of the full exhibition which took place at Telford College, November.

Since then the exhibition has also showcased at the Ironbridge Gorge Museum Trust on October 26, 2023. The organisers of this project are Diane Drummond, Emma Brown and Barbara Thomas. SEMA was lucky enough to support the small opening for Black History Month, October 2021, alongside other events such as the IC Bailey Liberation Library and an International Film Selection (see Arts), both hosted by SEMA at the HIVE. In November 2023 Diane Drummond joined SEMA as a director.

It is important to keep their legacy alive for future generations and this exhibition will help us do that and celebrate this vital part of shared history and heritage. We hope our exhibition will resonate with all cultures and communities, after all we are all connected, wherever we are from.

Diane Drummond, founder-organiser

October 2023 Black History Month: a photo gallery curated by SEMA director, Alexander Holmes-Brown, on the theme of RESISTANCE. The historical photographs represented stories, especially the lives and deaths of clergy, in Latin America and the Caribbean during the 1960s-1990s when many countries suffered under dictatorships. An example below is Argentina, from where Alexander’s abuelos/as came to Shropshire in the 1950s. Here we have the Madres de Plaza de Mayo fighting for their missing (disappeared) children, and the priest Carlos Mugica, assassinated.

SEMA works with people of all backgrounds to tell their stories. If you are interested to host the Windrush Exhibition, please get in touch with them directly here. If you would like SEMA or our colleagues to come to your organisation, school, or function please do contact us here. Our staff and other colleagues in our networks are competent to run courses addressing:

• Ancestry, Indigeneity, Black History in the UK
• Colonial and Empire studies, including British imperialism
• Working-class and Labour Movements in Shropshire
• African and African Diaspora histories and cultures
• North American, Caribbean, and Latin America (Abya Yala)