How do we define heritage? How can we look to placemaking as a way of mapping the past? The Connecting People and Places exhibition, made possible by the National Lottery Heritage Fund, is giving artists, photographers and poets the opportunity to explore these questions.

As the Connecting People and Places exhibition draws nearer, Blueprint for All reached out to the creatives involved in making this project come to life.

Adelle A’asante an artist from Yorkshire, her work, entitled ‘Beans Hall’ is a comment on local building the Piece Hall in Halifax, commenting on her heritage and identity as a Black African woman in the UK.

What does heritage mean to me?

Heritage as intangible as that may often sound, personally encapsulates my core values of presence, identity, and representation. 

Why did you want to be a part of the Connecting People and Places project? 

 An opportunity to share my story and connect my truth to my roots. This is what my grandmother Akosua Otenewaa Onyamaka would say; “Sε w’ankasa wo tirii ho a, yε yi wo ayi bᴐne”. In other words, if you do not tell your story be sure someone else would and they might not tell it right. 

What does being a part of this project mean to you as an artist of diverse heritage?

As a black African woman living in the UK my intersection is a very interesting one and in a country that prides itself so much on its heritage, its past glories, victories, and conquest, I walk slowly through everyday life seeing how stories are told in parts. Yet, the nation prides itself on being diverse. My work ceased to become a body of art. My body became many, many works of art, as I become the embodied absence of the past.