Thabiso Nyezi, Year 5, PG13, 2022

The Promised Land

Negotiating new settlement patterns of representation informed by an ethnic migrant culture.

Migration has existed for decades, whether it was the rural English communities during the 19th century, missionary travels to Africa during colonization, or the current wave of refugees that are fleeing war or environmental catastrophes. The reasons vary but human beings throughout history have always been migrating and the evidence is observed through their cultural settlement patterns. The value of culture is the way that we see ourselves and our place in the world; it is how we live our lives and how we appreciate and understand the lives of others.

Many of us migrants (first/second-generation immigrants, refugees, asylum seekers, and/or expatriates) from African, Asian, and Middle Eastern communities living in the UK understand that home’ is a relative phenomenon. Our homelands are evident in our everyday cultural practices and possessions. However, we are limited to the intimate spaces we inhabit that become spaces of escapism and an extension of our identities. The UK has seen an exponential growth of BAME (Black, Asian, and minority ethnic) populations in New UK Towns evident through contested spaces of ownership such as mixed-use urban stores (corner shops) that play vital roles in ethnic migrants’ cultural and social mobility.

“The Promised Land is a speculative strategy that explores how a city/town such as Milton Keynes with this growing population could respond to cultural integration by harnessing the transformational power of culture in all its forms. How could the negotiation of different vernaculars redefine our relationship with the urban city? Drawing on the original Milton Keynes 1970’s vision of a “City in the Forest” in rural Buckinghamshire. The project imagines how elements of ethnic culture could be celebrated beyond intimate spaces into the built

form while addressing Milton Keynes urban ambitions. A town that celebrates rather than resists transcultural exchanges and envisions them as important to the town’s evolving everyday culture. A town that dares to be characterised by its existing and future inhabitants.