Category Archives: Exhibition

7 June 2019 ~ Women of Tyneside Events – Newcastle – Until 30 June 2019

The Women of Tyneside project has been working with diverse groups of women across Tyne and Wear in a variety of settings.

International Women’s Day, Friday 8 March 2019, marked the launch of our Festival of Women, a uniquely programmed series of events taking place in venues across Tyneside from March until June 2019.

Festival of Women events organised by TWAM

Women of Tyneside: The Female of the Species (Great North Nights)

  • 7 June, 6-8pm Great North Museum: Hancock, Newcastle

Join Women of Tyneside for a chance to explore the Great North Museum: Hancock out of hours!

Learn more about the representation of women within our museum collections, including the female species’ within our natural history collection, and learn more about the Women of Tyneside project and our work, through a series of interventions across the museum. Remember to take the time to contribute to our washing line of sustainability.

Our Keeper of Archaeology, Andrew Parkin, will be carrying out tours of the fascinating representation of women within our Greek archaeology gallery at both 6:30pm and 7:30pm.

Grab a bite to eat and drink in the Hancock Café, open late. The evening will also be a chance to see the incredibly famous Natural History Museum’s Dippy the Dinosaur while it is here in Newcastle on its tour of the UK! Book your tickets to see Dippy on the evening here. 

Women of Tyneside: What If Girls Ruled the World?

  • 8 June, 11am-1pm Play + Invent space, Discovery Museum

Join artist Richard Bliss as he works with boys to create an artistic response to the question, ‘What if girls ruled the world?’ This workshop is for boys and their male parents or guardians. Age recommendation: 8-13 years old.

Book tickets here!

Women of Tyneside: Legacy!

  • 14 June, 9am-4pm  Great Hall, Discovery Museum, Newcastle

Book tickets here!

To celebrate and commemorate the Festival of Women, we are hosting a day of inspiring presentations from some of the regions’ most talented and influential women. Join Baroness Joyce Quin, chair of Tyne & Wear Archives & Museums as she presents this not-to-be-missed event, filled with incredible women!

Hear from:
– Hannabiell Sanders and Yilis del Carmen Suriel, Ladies of Midnight Blue
– Sharon MacArthur, also known as Miss Menopause
– Dame Vera Baird, Police & Crime Commissioner for Northumbria Police
– Linda Conlon, Chief Executive, International Centre for Life
– Moira Kilkenny, co-author of ‘Angels of the North: Notable Women of the North East’
– Smart Works Newcastle
With a keynote speech from the incredible Joeli Brearley, the founder of Pregnant Then Screwed.

Pregnant Then Screwed is an organisation which protects and supports women who encounter pregnancy and maternity discrimination and lobbies the Government for legislative change.

Established 4 years ago in response to Joeli’s own experience of pregnancy discrimination, Pregnant Then Screwed has supported over 3,000 women. Her demands for legislative change have gathered over 100,000 signatures and been supported by 103 MPs. Her national protest, March of the Mummies, has been staged in 6 cities across the UK and one city in the US and was raised in Prime Minister’s Questions. Her events have supported thousands of mothers to find work that works for them. Joeli is the winner of the 2019 Northern Power Women ‘’Agent of Change’’ award, she is an Observer 2018 New Radical, and an Amnesty International Women Human Rights Defender. She is currently advising the Government on what they should do about the use of Non Disclosure Agreements in cases of pregnancy and maternity discrimination.

To keep the ticket price as low as possible, tea & coffee will be provided, but delegates will need to make their own arrangements for lunch. A cafe is available on site at Discovery Museum, though all delegates are invited to bring their own lunch with them.

Our final speaker will be announced soon!

£7

Remembering Resistance: A Century of Women’s Protest in the North of England

  • 29 June, 11am – 4pm  Discovery Museum

Do you have stories to tell about activism? Remembering Resistance is a unique project celebrating 100 years of women’s protest in the North of England. Come along and share your memories and any related object which we would love to record, celebrate and use to inspire future generations. Click here for more information on the Remembering Resistance project.

Women of Tyneside: Deeds Not Words Walk

  • 30 June, 10.30am  Meet at The Junction, Haymarket, Newcastle

Approximately 90 minutes walk, beginning at Haymarket and ending at Central Station. Visiting sites linked to the suffrage movement in Newcastle, including the events of 9 October 1909, known as the Battle of Newcastle.

Booking information coming soon.

https://www.twmuseums.org.uk/women-of-tyneside-events

June 7, 2019

Feminism in Camden in the 1970s and 80s – Conway Hall Exhibition – London – until 30 April 2019

Curated by Susan Croft for SuffrageArts / Unfinished Histories
The Brockway Room Conway Hall

The exhibition explores feminist activism through posters from Women’s Liberation Workshops in the borough and how the arts and especially theatre contributed to the local feminist scene. Its focus is on Camden, but its resonance is much wider. Camden was at the heart of the emergence of the early WLM: the Women’s Liberation Movement in London with two of the earliest WLM groups in the country set up in 1969 in Belsize Lane  and in Tufnell Park, on the Camden/ Islington border. Both followed a radical, alternative, left-wing politic, influenced by existing campaigns such as Vietnam Solidarity. The Belsize Lane group were central to the organisation of the first WLM conference at Ruskin College in 1970 and the publication of The Body Politic. For many the movement transformed their lives and future focus. They went on to set up a community nursery, artists’ co-ops, and feminist newspapers including Shrew and Red Rag.

Fifty years on the exhibition celebrates the work of those early groups, and the posters they created in support of the first WLM march in 1971, the first to mark International Women’s Day in Britain since its founding in 1909. It also explores the importance of feminist theatre in the borough, where the extensive squatting scene, including arts centres, community hubs, artist’s studios and printshops, as well as homes, enabled the growth of numerous alternative theatre companies including many feminist groups, from Sadista Sisters to Beryl and the Perils and Spare Tyre and venues like the Drill Hall or the Women’s Arts Alliance. Some remain active like Kentish Town-based Clean Break, working with women ex-offenders to provide training and create plays about their experience. The exhibition features a poster for the first WLM play staged in Britain Vagina Rex and the Gas Oven by Jane Arden was staged at the Arts Lab Drury Lane in February 1969, along with posters celebrating later areas of activism including the campaign to get more women into manual trades and support for the Greenham Common Women’s Peace Camp.

Curated by Dr Susan Croft, the exhibition is staged by Unfinished Histories a project documenting alternative theatre history in conjunction with SuffrageArts, which work to foreground the role of the arts in the women’s suffrage campaign and recently staged the exhibition A Stone’s Throw from Westminster: Suffragettes and Other Feminists in Camden. If you would like further information or to support future projects, please email: contact@unfinishedhistories.com or suffragearts@gmail.com

Gallery Opening Hours

  • Fri 1 Mar, 09.00-17.00
  • Sat 2 Mar, closed
  • Sun 3 Mar, 09.00-22.00
  • Mon 4 Mar, 18.00 – 20.00
  • Tue 7 Mar, 09.00 – 22.00
  • Wed 8 Mar, 09.00 – 17.00

Ground floor. Brockway Room. Fully accessible.

  • Conway Hall Ethical Society
  • Phone: 020 7405 1818
  • Email: events@conwayhall.org.uk

Full details and updates at https://conwayhall.org.uk/event/feminism-in-camden-in-the-1970s-and-80s-2/

 

March 1, 2019

12 December 2018 18:00 ~ The Face of Suffrage – Talk – Birmingham

Lloyds Room, Birmingham Hippodrome.

Historian, writer and academic expert on the Suffragette movement Dr Nicola Gauld provides an overview of the Suffragist Campaign and a specific look at Birmingham and women’s stories.

The Face of Suffrage is a new large scale art installation created to celebrate 100 years of Votes for Women by Helen Marshall.

The ‘Face of Suffrage’ artwork isa floor-based, 200 metre square photo mosaic consisting of more than 3,500 images of females from across the West Midlands.   It will be located on the concourse of Birmingham New Street Station.  The artwork will be made up of a combination of historical images, women involved in the Suffrage movement from the early 1900s, and from photographs made today by people that have photographed the women in their lives and wish to join in to commemorate and celebrate their stories.

  • Free

For more information please visit http://grainphotographyhub.co.uk/portfolio-type/the-face-of-suffrage-talks-programme/

November 30, 2018

2 November 2018 ~ East End Suffragettes: the photography of Norah Smyth – London – until 9 February 2019

Exhibition at Four Corners Gallery, 121 Roman Road, London E2 0QN

  • Tues-Sat: 10.00-6.00. Admission free
  • Nearest tube: Bethnal Green, Central Line

Unseen Suffragette Photographs Return To London’s East End After 100 Years…

A unique exhibition of photographs by suffragette Norah Smyth opens at Four Corners Gallery this autumn.  These remarkable photographs, taken 100 years ago, will be shown for the first time in East London.  The exhibition is part of a £100,000 Heritage Lottery Fund supported project, which celebrates the little-known history of the radical East London Federation of the Suffragettes.

Norah Smyth (1874-1963) was a central figure in Sylvia Pankhurst’s East London Federation of Suffragettes (ELFS), living and working with her in Bow.  A talented artist and organiser, Smyth used her photographic skills to provide images for the ELFS newspaper, The Woman’s Dreadnought, alongside promotional postcards and catalogues, focusing in particular on local women and children living in poverty.  One hundred years on, these compelling photographs offer an intimate record of Sylvia Pankhurst and the ELFS’ activities in 1914-18, an extraordinary moment in women’s social history.

Sylvia Pankhurst’s ELFS was a breakaway from the better-known Women’s Social and Political Union (WSPU), led by her mother and sister Emmeline and Christabel Pankhurst.  The WSPU ceased campaigning for the vote at the outset of the First World War and threw itself behind the war effort.  By contrast, the ELFS maintained an anti-war stance, and continued to fight for the vote and working women’s rights throughout the conflict.   Faced by increasing wartime poverty in East London, they set up cost price restaurants, babies’ milk clinics, nurseries and a cooperative toy factory, run largely by and for local women.  Alongside the vote, they campaigned for equal pay, a living wage and better housing; helping support profound social change from their headquarters at The Women’s Hall on 400 Old Ford Road in Bow, where Norah Smyth and Sylvia Pankhurst also lived.

East End Suffragettes: the photographs of Norah Smyth includes 100 original photographs, letters and documents, generously loaned by the International Institute of Social History in Amsterdam from the Estelle Sylvia Pankhurst papers.  A free programme of talks and walks accompanies the exhibition.

About women’s suffrage

In February 1918 the Representation of the People Act enfranchised women over 30, subject to a small property qualification, extending the right to vote to 8.4 million women in the UK – around 40 per cent of the total population. The Act also extended the right to vote to men aged 21 and over, whether or not they owned property.  The Parliament (Qualification of Women) Act 1918 passed in November 1918, allowing women to be elected to Parliament.  Women first voted on 14 December 1918.  In July 1928 the Equal Franchise Act finally gave equal voting rights to women at the age of 21.

East London Federation of Suffragettes

Sylvia Pankhurst broke with the Women’s Social and Political Union (WSPU), the main suffragette party led by her mother and sister (Emmeline and Christabel Pankhurst) in 1913, to concentrate her efforts on alleviating the extreme poverty of women and children in London’s East End.  Her new organisation, the East London Federation of Suffragettes, campaigned for radical social changes for women as well as the vote.  At the outbreak of the First World War the WSPU ceased their campaigning in favour of the war effort.  By contrast, the ELFS maintained a radical pacifist stance, and continued to promote the cause throughout the war.

The Women’s Hall project

The exhibition forms part of The Women’s Hall, a £100,000 Heritage Lottery Fund project that celebrates the history of the East London Federation of Suffragettes 100 years after some women in the UK first gained the vote.  https://eastendwomensmuseum.org/the-womens-hall/   Activities include:

  • The Women’s Hall exhibition (Tower Hamlets Local History Library & Archives, 29 May-20 October 2018) evokes the interior of the original Hall.  Visitors can learn about the ELFS and the First World War in the East End and attend events and workshops. A pop-up community kitchen serves hot meals for the public at set times.
  • A ‘Suffrage in the East End’ Education Pack, and digitized archive materials made available at Tower Hamlets Local History Library & Archives.
  • The Modern Suffragette photography project for mothers runs at Four Corners in autumn 2018.  Further information: https://www.eventbrite.com/e/modern-suffragette-photo-project-open-day-tickets-50178673764

East End Women’s Museum is a public history project aiming to record, share, and celebrate women’s stories and voices from east London’s history. The project was established in 2015 in response to the ‘Jack the Ripper Museum’, as a positive, sustainable protest. www.eastendwomensmuseum.org

November 21, 2018

1 October 2018 ~ Barrow’s Shipyard Women Of WW2 Exhibition – until 31 December 2018

The Forum theatre Barrow, 28 Duke Street, Barrow in Furness LA14 1HH

Come and take a look at the stories and the memories of the women who worked in Barrow’s shipyard during WW2.

Running from October till December. Gratefully funded by the Heritage Lottery Fund

Check events page at https://www.facebook.com/events/873584106363384/

Barrow’s Shipyard Women

We are pleased to announce that Barrow’s Shipyard Women of WW2 will be exhibiting from October through to December 2018, at Forum 28, Barrow in Furness. Thanks to generous funding from The Heritage Lottery Fund.

This exhibition is suitable for school groups and educational visits. And if you would like to know more about what we can offer, contact us here. 

We will also be running some coffee mornings for people to share their stories in person, and get to know other interested parties.

To stay up to date with the latest events, follow us on Facebook.

https://barrowshipyardwomen.com/exhibition/

September 27, 2018