The collection that The Heritage & Cultural Exchange now preserves is mostly inherited from the Butetown History & Arts Centre.
The Butetown History & Arts Centre (BHAC) was a community organisation, set up in the 1980s. The initiative was started by African-American scholar Glenn Jordan who arrived in Cardiff in the 1980s and saw the huge value in helping the community of Tiger Bay to remember and document their past. BHAC provided oral history classes and developed into a historical archive, exhibition venue, publisher of books on local history and educational facility. It also ran an art gallery, highlighting paintings, photographs and sculptures of local artists.
Unfortunately, BHAC had to close in 2016 due to a lack in funding. The hugely important collection of oral histories and photographs has been mostly transfered to The Heritage & Cultural Exchange, to make them accessible once again for the local community.
