There's an untold truth being whispered in the British countryside, but you need good ears to hear it. It whispers at you every time you drive down a 'Gypsy Lane' or walk past a 'Romany Road'. I see it in every overgrown verge and feel it alongside every roadside hedgerow. But when I step inside most museums, it is drowned by deafening silence.
The truth, in case you haven't heard it, is that 500 years after arriving in this country, the historical, economic and cultural contribution of Britain's 300,000 Gypsies and Travellers is still crying out to be recognised.
We've fought in your wars, picked your food, read your palms, healed your horses, made your metalware and entertained you. But step inside most museums and it would be difficult to believe we ever existed.
Granted, there are a few old Romani caravans dotted here and there, but in most cases they are isolated and alone, with little interpretation for those that pass by. They are a silent testament to a race of people that most in the UK assume sauntered off into the sunset long ago. Where there is nothing, the total lack of representation is tantamount to a lie.
I believe it is an act of wilful omission that directly contributes to us being denied our rightful and continued place in the British landscape.
In 2005, I investigated why public museums, libraries and archives had done so little to represent and celebrate the history and culture of Britain's Gypsy and Traveller population. The result was Private Past, Public Future, a report I wrote for the South East Museum, Library and Archive Council (now MLA South East) and the Surrey History Centre.
The report showed an almost uniform experience within the community of being ignored and forgotten by heritage bodies. But it also revealed a real willingness within the community to record and preserve its own history. It showed that the failure of most public bodies to preserve and represent Gypsy and Traveller history has been matched only by the determination of pioneers within the community to keep the memory of their ancestors alive. Unfortunately, most of them are still struggling.
But in places there are glimmers of hope as museum curators realise there is a powerful story waiting to be told. But let me explain the struggle, and how the failure of museums to represent our history contributes to an impoverished present.
What I learned as I travelled around private Romani museums and dusty archives is that remembering and forgetting are powerful acts that can have a dramatic effect on the present and the future.
In one district, a planning appeal challenging a Gypsy community's right to stay on their own land was being held in a council chamber next door to a local museum with rich, but hidden, evidence of our continued presence in the area. The planning appeal rested on arguments that the community was 'out of character' with the area, despite the fact that the appellant's ancestors had been part of the character of the area for centuries.
When people discuss what and who should belong in the British countryside in the future, they naturally base it on the view they have of what it was like in the past. Little wonder then that when part of the narrative of the past is untold, our story never gets a fair hearing in the present. Not surprisingly, the Gypsies lost the appeal and were evicted back into a constant cycle of trespass and eviction.
One private Romani museum I visited in Kent is facing similar problems. Its owner, Henry Elliott, has been denied planning permission on his agricultural smallholding to create a museum that celebrates our history. The reason? The Gypsy wagons he has lovingly collected and restored are deemed to be alien to the area, to which he can only reply: 'Where do these people think the wagons have been for the past 150 years, in a multi-storey car park?'
If he fails, there will be one less place where the schoolchildren of Kent can go to find out about the county's largest and most misunderstood ethnic minority community. Ignorance is inevitable when there is nowhere to go to learn. Public museums should be providing that education, but they are choosing not to.
But in some parts of Britain, museum curators are deciding to actively remember rather than actively forget the history and culture of Romani Gypsies and Irish Travellers. In Luton's Wardown Park Museum, the Travelling People exhibition (on until August 27) has won a regional diversity award for its exhibition celebrating the diverse lives of the town's Gypsy and Traveller residents.
Hampshire Record Office's Living Album project is also under way and will produce a travelling exhibition and DVD in the autumn. But some of the greatest efforts are still being made by independent and private museums.
In Spalding, Lincolnshire, Gordon Boswell's Romani Museum is probably the best collection of Romani vardos (wagons), caravans and crafts in the country. It sits alongside a modern private Gypsy transit site where Gypsy children sometimes peer through the barn wall at the coachloads of visitors who have come to find out what really happened to the 'true Romanies' once romanticised by Victorian folklorists.
The answer lies as much outside as inside where normal, but different people, just get on with their lives. There is no better symbol of how educating people about our past must sit alongside accommodating our future.
From 15 to 17 September, the Weald and Downland Open Air Museum in Singleton, West Sussex, will host the second in a series of Gypsy festivals called Romani Roots. Among the timber buildings and flint walls, Romani heritage will be back where it belongs, celebrated in all its colourful, chaotic glory in an event that will blend elements of a British Gypsy horse fair with a flamenco festival. Let's hope that with an accompanying rhythm of trotting hoofs and castanettes, our untold story will find an even bigger audience.
Jake Bowers is a Romani journalist and broadcaster.
His report Private Past, Public Future can be read at: www.surrey.gov.uk/roadstoyourpast
Email: info@englishunlimited.co.uk
The truth, in case you haven't heard it, is that 500 years after arriving in this country, the historical, economic and cultural contribution of Britain's 300,000 Gypsies and Travellers is still crying out to be recognised.
We've fought in your wars, picked your food, read your palms, healed your horses, made your metalware and entertained you. But step inside most museums and it would be difficult to believe we ever existed.
Granted, there are a few old Romani caravans dotted here and there, but in most cases they are isolated and alone, with little interpretation for those that pass by. They are a silent testament to a race of people that most in the UK assume sauntered off into the sunset long ago. Where there is nothing, the total lack of representation is tantamount to a lie.
I believe it is an act of wilful omission that directly contributes to us being denied our rightful and continued place in the British landscape.
In 2005, I investigated why public museums, libraries and archives had done so little to represent and celebrate the history and culture of Britain's Gypsy and Traveller population. The result was Private Past, Public Future, a report I wrote for the South East Museum, Library and Archive Council (now MLA South East) and the Surrey History Centre.
The report showed an almost uniform experience within the community of being ignored and forgotten by heritage bodies. But it also revealed a real willingness within the community to record and preserve its own history. It showed that the failure of most public bodies to preserve and represent Gypsy and Traveller history has been matched only by the determination of pioneers within the community to keep the memory of their ancestors alive. Unfortunately, most of them are still struggling.
But in places there are glimmers of hope as museum curators realise there is a powerful story waiting to be told. But let me explain the struggle, and how the failure of museums to represent our history contributes to an impoverished present.
What I learned as I travelled around private Romani museums and dusty archives is that remembering and forgetting are powerful acts that can have a dramatic effect on the present and the future.
In one district, a planning appeal challenging a Gypsy community's right to stay on their own land was being held in a council chamber next door to a local museum with rich, but hidden, evidence of our continued presence in the area. The planning appeal rested on arguments that the community was 'out of character' with the area, despite the fact that the appellant's ancestors had been part of the character of the area for centuries.
When people discuss what and who should belong in the British countryside in the future, they naturally base it on the view they have of what it was like in the past. Little wonder then that when part of the narrative of the past is untold, our story never gets a fair hearing in the present. Not surprisingly, the Gypsies lost the appeal and were evicted back into a constant cycle of trespass and eviction.
One private Romani museum I visited in Kent is facing similar problems. Its owner, Henry Elliott, has been denied planning permission on his agricultural smallholding to create a museum that celebrates our history. The reason? The Gypsy wagons he has lovingly collected and restored are deemed to be alien to the area, to which he can only reply: 'Where do these people think the wagons have been for the past 150 years, in a multi-storey car park?'
If he fails, there will be one less place where the schoolchildren of Kent can go to find out about the county's largest and most misunderstood ethnic minority community. Ignorance is inevitable when there is nowhere to go to learn. Public museums should be providing that education, but they are choosing not to.
But in some parts of Britain, museum curators are deciding to actively remember rather than actively forget the history and culture of Romani Gypsies and Irish Travellers. In Luton's Wardown Park Museum, the Travelling People exhibition (on until August 27) has won a regional diversity award for its exhibition celebrating the diverse lives of the town's Gypsy and Traveller residents.
Hampshire Record Office's Living Album project is also under way and will produce a travelling exhibition and DVD in the autumn. But some of the greatest efforts are still being made by independent and private museums.
In Spalding, Lincolnshire, Gordon Boswell's Romani Museum is probably the best collection of Romani vardos (wagons), caravans and crafts in the country. It sits alongside a modern private Gypsy transit site where Gypsy children sometimes peer through the barn wall at the coachloads of visitors who have come to find out what really happened to the 'true Romanies' once romanticised by Victorian folklorists.
The answer lies as much outside as inside where normal, but different people, just get on with their lives. There is no better symbol of how educating people about our past must sit alongside accommodating our future.
From 15 to 17 September, the Weald and Downland Open Air Museum in Singleton, West Sussex, will host the second in a series of Gypsy festivals called Romani Roots. Among the timber buildings and flint walls, Romani heritage will be back where it belongs, celebrated in all its colourful, chaotic glory in an event that will blend elements of a British Gypsy horse fair with a flamenco festival. Let's hope that with an accompanying rhythm of trotting hoofs and castanettes, our untold story will find an even bigger audience.
Jake Bowers is a Romani journalist and broadcaster.
His report Private Past, Public Future can be read at: www.surrey.gov.uk/roadstoyourpast
Email: info@englishunlimited.co.uk
