Gypsy and Traveller Heritage and Storytelling

Our history is not a costume, a photograph of a painted wagon or a decorative addition to a heritage month.

It is living knowledge carried through families, spoken memory, photographs, objects, work, language, art and place.

Proud Gypsy Traveller CIC helps ethnic Gypsy and Traveller people record, protect and share their own histories.

Our voices. Our knowledge. Our terms.

Who controls the story matters

Too often, our communities were either erased from the record or described almost entirely through the eyes of institutions.

When ethnicity was removed from the story, what happened to Gypsy and Traveller people could be presented as poverty, criminality, family failure or an isolated social problem—with little recognition of racism, state policy or the wider attempt to control how our communities lived.

Where our identity was recorded, the language was often written by governments, councils, police, churches, charities or other bodies with power over our lives. Forced settlement could be described as improvement. Child removal could be recorded as protection. The loss of stopping places and traditional work could be reframed as progress.

An archive can preserve a record and still fail to preserve the truth of the people inside it.

PGT works to put names, identities, family memory and community testimony back into the story.

Heritage is not only about the past

History shapes how communities are understood now.

The stories society tells about Gypsy and Traveller people influence whether children see their identity represented with pride, whether families are believed, whether racism is recognised and which policies become publicly acceptable.

That is why heritage, storytelling and advocacy are closely connected for us. Recovering a family photograph, an oral history or an overlooked archive record can be personally important, but it can also challenge a wider public story that has been repeated for generations.

What we create with communities

History can demand action

Heritage is not always comfortable.

It can reveal forced settlement, child removal, restrictions on traditional work, closure of stopping places, institutional racism and attempts to weaken or erase ethnic identity.

PGT does not separate those histories from their present-day consequences. Remembering injustice matters, but remembrance without accountability can become another way for institutions to appear concerned while avoiding responsibility.

Our work can connect historical evidence with public education, access to records, policy change, recognition and conversations about repair.

Consent, ownership and respect

A family photograph or personal story does not become public property because it has been shared with a project.

Before recording, displaying or publishing material, we agree what can be used, where it can appear, how people will be named, how sensitive material will be protected and what happens to copies when the project ends.

We will not package people’s trauma for public consumption or rely on stereotypes because they are easier to market.

Community material should not be taken from people and then interpreted somewhere they cannot see, challenge or influence it.

Where this work began

The Proud Gypsy Traveller name grew from community heritage work in Doncaster, where families shared photographs, objects and memories and helped bring local Gypsy and Traveller history into public spaces.

That story deserves its own space, so rather than repeat it here, you can read more about the original project and the families and exhibitions that helped shape PGT.