Chinua Achebe wrote that until the lions have their own historians, the history of the hunt will always glorify the hunter. Who gets to tell their own stories? Who gets to be the lion or the hunter? Dig Where You Stand is not only about telling our own stories but retelling them, inserting them into the fabric of the city, and locating where we were to show where we are now.
We are very excited to have commissioned 14 artists to take part in the DWYS Biennial 2024 [20th Jul - 18th Aug].
Over a period of six months, these artists have been exploring local archives and developing creative responses to the documents, pictures, fragments and silences contained within them. Particular emphasis has been placed on finding stories about working class people of colour living in South Yorkshire before 1945. We have been here for centuries.
Through their creative practice, artists provide rare insight into this history and breathe life into people often reduced to bare facts and figures. They dispel the myth of a pure white past glorified in mainstream historical accounts and demonstrate the deep connection people of colour have to the region.
I grew up Black in Sheffield without a sense of history connected to the contemporary culture that surrounded me. Dig Where You Stand is an innovative, creative and soulful corrective to the reductive version of Sheffield we so often see in mainstream media
Just as histories are written across a city, this multi venue exhibition will display artworks across a range of highly visible public spaces. Make your way around Sheffield city centre and be moved by a stirring mixture of painting, poetry, puppetry, soundscapes, film, textiles and live performances.
For more information on opening times, directions and accessibility for individual venues, please click on the links below.
All venues are free to enter, have disabled access and are familiar sites centrally located. We are committed to making art and heritage accessible to all groups and communities, particularly those who have been historically marginalised by major institutions. These public spaces are part of the fabric of everyday life in Sheffield's city centre. By exhibiting in them we aim to amplify the untold, connect with a range of communities, and a generate a conversation about whose heritage is celebrated in the city and wider region, and whose is hidden away and kept out of reach.
More information about our programme of events and commissioned artists can be found below.
This exhibition is made possible by The National Lottery Heritage Fund. With thanks to National Lottery Players.
