Mnemonic Conviviality in ‘Post-Cold War’ Britain: Entangled Memories in Urban Space

This article asks how sharing everyday memories in Britain’s superdiverse urban spaces can foster understanding across difference. Drawing on narratives and images produced in 39 arts based photography workshops in West Bromwich and Hyson Green, it develops the concept of mnemonic conviviality: a mode of “living with difference” grounded in the exchange of personal, familial, and collective memories. Through a multi sited, multi group methodology – combining photovoice, visual analysis, and ethnographic dialogue – the article demonstrates how ordinary objects, places, and images spark conversations that entangle memories of socialism, post socialism, colonialism and migration. Through these micro narratives, participants forge temporary commonalities while revealing the enduring impact of the Cold War, colonial hierarchies, and racialisation on contemporary British life. The article demonstrates how memory studies can deepen understandings of conviviality in hyperlocal superdiverse spaces.