Letters from Back A Yard

The ‘Letters from Back A Yard’ Collection is a growing digital archive charting the personal experience of the Caribbean migrants who came to live and work in Britain from the 1940’s to the end of the 1980s.  

The collection began as a collaboration between BCU’s Black Studies Team and the ADM Archive in 2023 to digitally record and preserve the migrant experience in Post War Britain and create a resource for future research.  

Original documents such as letters, postcards, photographs and certificates and travel documents have been collected from a range of individuals, digitised, and catalogued by ADM Archive and then returned to their owners. This has created a digital archive that explores what it was like to leave home to come to Britain, to settle, live and to work here;  the affect this had on family relationships; and the impact of Black Arts and Culture.