Reclaiming the Narrative: Portrait Youth

What’s it about?

Reclaiming the Narrative (RTN) was a participatory arts-based collaboration between local young Muslims, the Manchester Centre for Youth Studies (Fatima Khan), the British Muslim Heritage Centre and the Manchester School of Art (Alice Kettle). Working together, we used collage, ceramics, textiles, dress and photography to explore and understand how the young people negotiate their identities within an era of structurally embedded and endemic Islamophobia.  

RTN collaborated with the Portrait Youth (PY) project at Manchester Fashion Institute (Jo Jenkinson, John Earnshaw) to explore identity with the young people using dress, styling, and photography. An innovative model that not only allows a new way of engaging with identity-making practices, but one that decentres the researcher and privileges the young Muslims’ agency within the research process.

This exhibition will showcase the RTN workshops and portraits from the RTN x PY collaboration by the acclaimed photographer Maryam Wahid, hosted by project partners, the British Muslim Heritage Centre. 

Who’s leading the event?

Manchester Metropolitan University and the British Muslim Heritage Centre

Fatima Khan, Alice Kettle, Jo Jenkinson, John Earnshaw

Scheduling information

22nd – 27th October, opening times 9am-5pm, with a launch event on Saturday 22nd 3pm-5pm.