Here to Stay – Exhibition by Inès Elsa Dala

Here To Stay was born from the desire to initiate long-overdue acknowledgement of pioneering healthcare workers, who laid the foundations of the National Health Service.

Commissioned in 2018, in light of the 70 year anniversary of the arrival of Empire Windrush at Tilbury Docks in Essex – from islands across the West Indies – in response to post-war labour shortages in the UK.

This mass migration, on the 22nd of June 1948, led to the birth of the NHS and has had monumental impact on its successes in the decades which followed. 2018’s Windrush Scandal further catalysed the need to publicise this urgent and timely project: to protest the mistreatment of the Windrush Generation by the UK’s Home Office, which remains unresolved.

​Oral histories were recorded during each portrait sitting, transcribed and published online, to ensure each participant’s story is highly accessible – even to people who may not be physically able to attend exhibitions. Each portrait sitter can be identified by name and narrative: 

​Here To Stay is on permanent display at Sandwell Hospital’s Education Centre. A duplicate set of prints, created with support from The University of Warwick, have enabled us to tour this exhibition more widely. So far this portrait series has toured to Medicine Gallery (Birmingham), The University of Birmingham’s Medical School, Soho House Museum (Handsworth, Birmingham) as well as St. Pancras Hospital (central London) and Brick Lane (east London).

​For information about how to support the continuation of this project in 2020, please contact: dalal@ineselsa.com