Travellers and Settlers project
A celebration of diversity in the East Riding community, past and present
About Travellers and Settlers
This project aims to celebrate the lived experiences, past and present, of the settlement and resettlement of traveller and ethnic minority communities across the East Riding.
The history and formation of East Riding has always involved travellers and settlers, people who have migrated, passed through or settled and raised families of future generations and who have helped shape our heritage and culture. This is still true today and the East Riding of Yorkshire Council wants to understand and to share these experiences and to celebrate the rich diversity within our community.
Your Council...where everyone matters
There are several ways to be involved in the project detailed on this webpage, and if you would like to find out more please email equalities@eastriding.gov.uk
‘Travellers and Settlers’ is a partnership project between the East Riding of Yorkshire Council’s Equality and Diversity team, East Riding Museums and East Riding Archives.
Image: Morden's Map of the East Riding of Yorkshire, 1772 (East Riding Archives YCM/1/13)
Stories of Diversity
Since 2022, we have been collecting stories from East Riding communities through oral history interviews recorded on a dictaphone, and school-based workshops using our virtual Minecraft Archiverse.
These stories have been preserved in the East Riding Archives collections, adding to almost 1,000 years of documented East Riding history.
Explore the ‘East Riding Travellers and Settlers Project (ERTS)’ collection in the East Riding Archives catalogue.
Free Resources for Schools
East Riding Museums and East Riding Archives have produced a series of free resources for schools and educators called Diverse Local Histories: East Yorkshire.
These resources use archival records and museum artefacts as the foundation for a series of lesson plans, helping Key Stage 1, 2 and 3 pupils connect with locally relevant stories of cultural diversity.
These will be available shortly on this webpage as printable pdfs.
Find an exhibition near you
Our exhibition “Travellers and Settlers: A History of Ethnic Diversity, Migration and Settlement in the East Riding of Yorkshire” highlights a selection of stories found within documents in the East Riding Archives and artefacts from the East Riding Museums’ collections, evidencing that East Yorkshire has always been a place of diversity.
From the Mesolithic to the Modern Day, we present stories of sanctuary seekers, workers, 'aliens', evacuees, freed slaves, interesting visitors, and more. In addition to celebrating the region’s diverse heritage, to highlighting the stories of today, the exhibition also shares contemporary oral histories and school pupils’ creations about their life and culture.
We will be adding more dates soon.
If you have visited the exhibition and would like to tell us your thoughts, we would be grateful if you could complete our quick survey.
The Archiverse is part of STREAM - the initiative by East Riding Culture and Leisure to make science, technology, reading, engineering, arts and maths more accessible and fun for young people.