Events

Overview

What is South Asian Heritage Month?

South Asian Heritage Month runs from 18th July to 17th August. Established in 2019, it recognises and spotlights the histories, contributions and lived experiences of South Asian communities in the UK.

South Asia consists of eight countries: Afghanistan, Bangladesh, Bhutan, India, Maldives, Nepal, Pakistan and Sri Lanka. Alongside this, there is a vast and complex South Asian diaspora across the world, shaped by migration, displacement, colonial histories and resistance.

The month concludes with the anniversary of Partition. The Indian Independence Act received royal assent on 18 July 1947, and the Radcliffe Line, which divided India, West Pakistan and East Pakistan, was published on 17 August 1947.

Arts SU continues its commitment to platforming South Asian voices and practices that reflect the depth, plurality and political realities of our communities.

How are we celebrating South Asian Heritage Month?

We are hosting an exhibition in the Arts SU Project Space at Central Saint Martins. Selected works will form a collective exhibition responding to this year’s theme, bringing together student practices that centre complexity, lived experience and critical reflection.

The exhibition will run from 6th May to 15th June 2026.

This year’s theme is "Rooted, Not Rendered"...

South Asian identity is often aestheticised, commodified and flattened into something consumable. Patterns are borrowed, languages are sampled, and histories are reduced to mood boards.

Rooted, Not Rendered challenges this.

This year’s theme invites you to resist being visually “rendered” for a Western gaze and instead create from a place that is lived, embodied and critically aware. We are interested in work that is grounded in experience rather than performance.

As you develop your submission, you might reflect on whether you have ever felt your identity has been co-opted for profit and how that shaped your understanding of self. You might consider how you define home, whether materially, emotionally or politically, and what sustains your connection to your roots. We welcome work that engages with tensions, contradictions and fractures within South Asian experiences, as well as work that expresses what feels urgent to articulate right now. We are particularly interested in practices that move beyond representation into reclamation.

These prompts are intended to provoke thought rather than restrict interpretation. We encourage responses that are intimate, confrontational, celebratory, diasporic, hybrid or unresolved.

Who can apply?

Submissions are open to all UAL students across all colleges, courses and levels of study. We welcome work in any medium, including painting, photography, film, sculpture, installation, performance, textiles, poetry, sound and digital media.

We look forward to receiving work that is reflective, intentional and unapologetically rooted.