A powerful new “living exhibition” inspired by one Coventry family’s story will celebrate South Asian heritage and its impact on modern Britain when it opens at the Herbert Art Gallery & Museum next month.

Stories That Made Us - Roots, Resilience, Representation, opening Friday 14 November, invites visitors to step inside a series of immersive rooms exploring key moments in time as South Asian communities adapted to social, political and cultural shifts in the UK over five decades.

Visitors will walk through four room settings, each filled with real stories of migration, activism and creativity brought to life through an ambitious production featuring renowned artists and contributors.

The exhibition draws on curator and artist Hardish Virk’s ‘Stories That Made Us’ Collection and Coventry Archives’ ‘Virk Collection’, showcasing photographs, books, magazines, posters, vinyl records, cassettes and personal memorabilia alongside oral histories, radio broadcasts, music and film that bring the South Asian experience to life.

The gallery on Jordan Well said it is one of its “most ambitious” projects in terms of scale and detail.

The journey begins in a 1960s passport control room, surrounded by photographs of Hardish’s family in India alongside newspaper cuttings showing the challenges faced by newly arrived communities. Visitors then enter a 1970s living room based on Hardish’s childhood home, where his father, Harbhajan Singh Virk hosted meetings of the Indian Workers’ Association – a group that helped shape the city’s fight against racism and inequality.

A vibrant 1980s bedroom reflects the identity of a British-born South Asian teenager through posters, schoolbooks and music, while a radio studio (1990s–2010) celebrates the legacy of Jasvir Kang, Hardish’s mother, a poet and broadcaster whose Punjabi radio shows bought joy and company to many South Asians living in the West Midlands.

Coventry is home to one of the UK’s most vibrant South Asian communities, with 18.5 per cent of residents identifying as Asian or Asian British (2021 Census).

Hardish is the author of the stories and themes in the exhibition, which have taken inspiration from what he saw and experienced growing up in Coventry and England as a British born South Asian.