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
More often than not, we were simply erased.
When a story was too big to bury completely, our ethnicity was often removed from the record. What happened to Gypsy and Traveller people was then presented as poverty, criminality, family failure or an isolated social problem—with no acknowledgement of the ethnic identity, racism or state policy surrounding it.
Where our identity was recorded, the story was usually viewed through a colonial lens.
Governments, councils, police, churches and charities recorded themselves as rescuers, reformers or providers of welfare. Our culture was described as the problem. Forced settlement became “improvement”. Child removal became “protection”. The destruction of traditional ways of living and working became “progress”.
Official archives tell us a great deal about what institutions thought they had the right to do to our families. They tell us far less about who those families really were, what they understood was happening or what was taken from them.
An archive is not neutral when it preserves the voice of the institution but erases the identity and testimony of the people affected.
PGT works to put those names, identities and voices back into the record.
What we do
Our heritage and creative work can include:
- Recording oral histories and family testimony
- Collecting photographs, documents and artefacts
- Archival and historical research
- Community-led exhibitions
- Writing and publication
- Film, photography and digital storytelling
- Spoken word and performance
- Creative workshops and community events
- Training community members in interviewing and recording
- Developing accessible community archives
Projects can focus on a family, place, period, cultural practice or experience shared across communities.
Built from community history
The Proud Gypsy Traveller name began with a Heritage Lottery-funded project exploring twentieth-century Gypsy and Traveller history in Doncaster.
Community members contributed their memories, family photographs and objects. The work led to exhibitions, photographic displays, publications and opportunities for community members to develop new skills.
That principle still guides PGT today.
Communities should not simply provide the material. They should help decide how it is interpreted, presented and protected.
History can demand action
Heritage is not always comfortable.
It can reveal forced settlement, child removal, institutional racism, restrictions on traditional work, closure of stopping places 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, policy change, recognition, access to records 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 or publishing material, we agree:
- What can be used
- Where it can appear
- How people will be named
- Who will retain copies
- Whether permission can be withdrawn
- How sensitive material will be protected
- What will happen when the project ends
We will not package people’s trauma for public consumption or present stereotypes because they are easier to market.
Work with PGT
We work with community groups, museums, archives, universities, councils, cultural organisations and funders.
Bring us in before the exhibition, research questions and interpretation have already been decided.
We can help develop community-led heritage projects, oral-history programmes, exhibitions, publications and creative work that communities recognise as their own.
If the project is about our history, ethnic Gypsy and Traveller people should hold real power within it.