Launched officially in 2018, City Heritage curates heritage walks, storytelling tours, and cultural immersion experiences in Kannur exploring the heart and soul of Northern Kerala. (image: instagram.com/city_heritage)

What if travel has more to offer than just sightseeing? It can be an experiential journey into the texture and essence of a place. In a time when travel is often celebrated for self-discovery, fancy selfies, and Instagram reels, City Heritage guides you into the soul of places.

Launched officially in 2018, City Heritage curates heritage walks, storytelling tours, and cultural immersion experiences in Kannur exploring the heart and soul of Northern Kerala. Started as a thoughtful exercise to revive food and forgotten recipes of Mappila Cuisine, it slowly took the form of retrieval of cultural history and heritage. As of May this year, the City Heritage completes 650+ heritage walks across North Kerala.

A passionate storyteller, Muhammed Shihad is the pioneer behind this project. After more than a decade in Delhi, he quit his job in a structural engineering company and returned home to Kannur, where he initiated this project, initially as a document. Deeply influenced by Delhi’s acclaimed heritage scholar Suhail Hashmi, City Heritage started aiming at a similar mission in Kannur.

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Shihad attributes his relentless and liberal pursuit of history and heritage, and his dedication to storytelling, to his roots.

“It all comes from my upbringing and surroundings. My love for food began at home, and my storytelling ability was inherited from my father. During my childhood, he used to take me on walks and narrate the local histories he knew. I am kind of continuing those engagements, adding the missing narratives, and carrying the love from home. Also, Delhi’s broad heritage environment definitely influenced me,” he recounts.

Muhammed Shahid, Founder of City Heritage

Conceived in 2014, the heritage project gained public recognition through its successful culinary campaign featuring Muttappam, a Mappila delicacy. While recollecting ventures that successfully recovered forgotten historical elements, Shihad also acknowledges the numerous efforts that failed to come to fruition.

City Heritage played a huge role in placing Kannur in the commercial tourism map of India and generating active public engagement relating to it. They were pioneers in initiating the night walk in Kerala, first launched during 2018 Ramadan. This initiative later became a celebrated routine activity, setting a precedent and inspiring many interest groups.

Heritage walks across cities and coastal towns like Thalassery, Mahe, Vadakara, Beypore, Chaliyam, Kasaragod, Tanur, Ponnani, and Kozhikode, their unique storytelling sessions and interactions, the grassroot endeavour dusts off history from the gossamers of forgotten memories. What started as a cultural awareness at a community level, it now took the shape of cultural movement.

City Heritage brings like-minded people together on expeditions of cultural retrieval. By focusing on community histories, local folklore, legends, architectural treasures, and hidden heritage gems, they generate conservation awareness and embed local history into the mainstream in a meaningful and responsible manner.

Mappila Bay Stories– A Heritage Walk and Storytelling Experience

The reclamation of Kerala’s little histories became a subversive act, with City Heritage renders these stories alive, aware, and accessible. Realising the impact it makes on the cultural landscape of Kerala, City Heritage has received recognition from government bodies, tourism councils and educational institutions and partnerships from key institutions.

Currently, City Heritage operates with 6 direct employees and 19 interns in 11 cities, all committed to the mission of presenting their places and its rich heritage. Their ultimate aim is to expand and empower the initiative into a pan-India city network. Their plans also include becoming a trustworthy consultation platform for the foreign academic institutions.

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Early this year, in January, City Heritage Foundation organised an eponymous event in Kannur, commemorating the 500th anniversary of the Arakkal chieftain Valiya Hassan’s (also known as Baliya Hassan) martyrdom, with various cultural events held to revive his powerful legacy.

“Given our intense local history and local activity, remembering and celebrating it is a responsibility,” says Shihad with unwavering conviction. “Some of our projects in the pipeline intend to re-explore history from the perspective of anti-colonial resistance.”

The Foundation is also busy preparing a book, slated for release this year. They believe it will serve as a testament to the repertoire of work and knowledge they have built over the years.

When the founder affirms, “sharing of information is an energy,” then what could be a more precious political activity for an initiative like City Heritage to champion, especially in an era when conscious attempts to erase history are happening.