Paths You Walk
Evocations of cultures and experiences of empire workers — Walsall, 1960s
Bearing witness to the
invisible workforce
Between 1945 and 1980, tens of thousands of workers from South Asia, the Caribbean, and Ireland arrived in the Black Country to power the region's foundries, steel works, and chain shops. Their labour built post-war Britain. Their stories were rarely told.
Reimagining Industrial Migratory is a Heritage Lottery Funded photographic and oral history project that places these communities back at the centre of their own narrative — through large-format portraiture, location-based storytelling, and a permanent digital archive open to all.
Read more about the project
About the Project
A National Lottery Heritage Fund supported film and heritage project based in Walsall. Billy Dosanjh has produced cinematic moving-image works and heritage-based photographs reimagining local South Asian narratives — stories of labour, migration, and resilience that shaped the Black Country.
The project drew on the lives and stories of communities in Caldmore and executed its productions on the streets of The Butts, transforming familiar terraced rows into fully realised 1960s environments. The exhibition features the film series alongside photographs, selected sequences, and an extraordinary collection of period props and costumes.
- Caldmore Community Garden
- Walsall Library Archive
- Walsall College
- The New Art Gallery Walsall
- Walsall Council
- More Than a Moment
Oral Testimonies
Anonymous oral histories recorded in Caldmore, The Butts, and Willenhall — voices of migration, labour, and belonging in the Black Country.
Available as a printed booklet at the exhibition and as a free download.
Download Booklet (PDF) ↓Inside the world of Paths You Walk
In January 2026, the streets of The Butts in Walsall were transformed into a fully realised 1960s environment. Then the snow came — and kept falling. These images document the shoot across its extraordinary final night and the days of preparation that made it possible.
Shooting in the Snow
The January night shoot on The Butts coincided with heavy snowfall, turning the period-dressed street into something otherworldly. The crew kept filming.
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Cast in Costume
The cast transformed into residents of 1960s Walsall — flat caps, headscarves, leather jackets, and housecoats faithful to the period.
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Cast Headshots
Potential cast members photographed during the casting process.
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Production stills © RIMS CIC
Building the Set
The Butts was dressed with period props, signage, and vehicles — coal in wheelbarrows, vintage cars, Fry's Chocolate adverts, and the iconic G. Singh & Sons shopfront.
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Executing the Shoot
Camera rigs, dolly tracks, lighting, and marshals — the machinery of a professional film shoot on a residential street.
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The Crew
The team behind the cameras — from pre-production planning to the final wrap on a frozen Walsall morning.
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Local Photographic Archive
This selection draws on the work of several local photographers, including John Henry Westley, whose images span the 1950s to the 1970s. Working methodically across the borough, Westley and others recorded the streets, factories, and public life of a town in the midst of profound industrial and social change — terraced rows giving way to tower blocks, foundries still glowing at dusk, children playing on streets that would soon be redeveloped beyond recognition.
These photographs are held by the Walsall Local History Centre and other local archives, and form a vital visual resource for Paths You Walk. They capture the physical world that South Asian migrant workers arrived into during the 1960s — the houses, shops, and workplaces of The Butts, Caldmore, and the wider Black Country. Billy Dosanjh and the production design team drew directly on these images to reconstruct period-accurate street environments for the film shoot.
The exhibition at The New Art Gallery Walsall presents a selection of original prints from local photographers alongside the production stills and moving image works, inviting visitors to see how the documentary past and the reimagined present sit together.
- John Henry Westley & other local photographers
- 1950s – 1970s
- Walsall Local History Centre
- Streets, industry, public life — Walsall & the Black Country
© Walsall Local History Centre & local collections
The Industrial Landscape
The Black Country that migrant workers arrived into — foundries glowing at dusk, cooling towers breaking the skyline, terraced streets pressed against steelworks. These images place Paths You Walk in its industrial context.
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From the Gods of Agriculture to the Gods of Industry
In November 2025, Billy Dosanjh travelled to Rajasthan and Haryana to walk the landscapes his parents' generation left behind. The trip was an attempt to understand what it meant to leave — to stand in the fields, the villages, and the temples that shaped an entire generation's sense of self, and to feel the distance between that world and the foundries, terraces, and canal banks of the Black Country.
The journey was one of consciousness as much as geography — tracing the leap from agrarian life governed by seasons, harvests, and the rituals of the land, to an industrial existence measured in shifts, wages, and smoke. For the men and women who made that crossing, the distance was not merely physical. It was a passage between entire ways of understanding the world.
The research informed the emotional and visual language of Paths You Walk, grounding the project in the landscapes and light of the places left behind — so that the work could speak not only of arrival, but of departure.
- Rajasthan & Haryana, India
- November 2025
- Understanding the origin — the agrarian world that empire workers left behind
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Research photographs — Rajasthan & Haryana, November 2025 · © Billy Dosanjh / RIMS CIC
Building the project together
Caldmore Community Garden
At the Summer Garden Party, Billy met residents who have lived through remarkable experiences of migration and transformation. Their stories provide the foundation for the project.
Walsall College
A student panel selected transcriptions for interpretive materials. Eighteen students joined the January shoot, gaining hands-on production experience.
Photography © Demi / Walsall College
Cast Interviews
Conversations with the cast of Paths You Walk, filmed on location during the January 2026 shoot on The Butts, Walsall.
The Tableaux
Where to see the work
The New Art Gallery Walsall
Community Gallery
6 March – 12 July 2026
Gallery Square, Walsall, WS2 8LG · Free entry
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