Suffragettes Unseen

Christina Broom,
Museum of London Collection

Listening to Meryl Streep’s interview this week, about women in film, films made by women and about women, following the release of Suffragette!, we are reminded of how much unseen history of women there is, not necessarily undocumented but certainly undervalued in its potential, particularly that recorded, made by and about women.

A visit to Museum of London last week to see the Christina Broom exhibition ‘Soldiers and Suffragettes’ was an eye opening experience for me in many ways. Museum of London Docklands is a lovely space, situated along the Thames at the evocatively named West India Quay, giving you a sense of the river’s trading history, a very different feel to it’s sister site in the heart of the City.

Moseley St Mary’s Heritage & Access Project

GeoPhysics survey by StrataScan prior to path realignment

I’ve recently become involved in an HLF funded heritage project at St Mary’s Church Moseley – or more specifically the churchyard. The large churchyard at the back of the church on St Mary's Row is the only piece of public green space in the village but having fallen into disrepair and becoming a focus for anti-social activity it has been much underused for many years. 

Parishioners and local residents have made great strides over the last 5 years to cut back overgrown vegetation and make general improvements to the site – and a Project committee was formed which, following public consultation, produced a MasterPlan and subsequent funding application.

Still Going Swimmingly!

Stirchley Baths ceremonial plaque 1910.
Image: stirchleybaths.org

Begun in 1910 and opened in mid 1911, Stirchley swimming baths (on Bournville Lane) was a popular local facility for nearly eighty years before it closed to the public in 1988. By this time the Edwardian building was in need of significant attention, as were many other swimming pools in the city, and it fell into even greater disrepair as the years passed.

But we can now see a renovated and refurbished building emerging from behind the hoardings as the major project reaches completion. 

At Home with Vanley Burke

At Home with Vanley Burke at the Ikon (until 27 September) is unlike most exhibitions in that it presents the visitor with the entire contents of Vanley’s flat in Nechells, north-east Birmingham. Most of us know Vanley as a photographer, working in Britain and Birmingham since the 1960s, but he is also a collector and archivist. This exhibition allows us an unusual insight into Vanley’s own world. As Marlene Smith writes in the excellent accompanying guide, ‘now we see him’.

Birmingham's Hidden Spaces

Curzon Street Station.

Image by Birmingham Post / Birmingham's Hidden Spaces

Do you look up at the historic architecture found above the gaudy line of every-town shop branding? Do you have a curiosity of what might be behind an interesting looking door or wall? If so, you are going to love Birmingham’s Hidden Spaces.

Fight for the Right!

In 2012-13 I worked on an exciting project called Fight for the Right: the Birmingham Suffragettes. Funded by the Heritage Lottery Fund, the project gave an opportunity for young women living in Birmingham to explore the activities of both sides of the suffrage campaign, militant and non-militant, that took place in the city in the early 1900s. A group of young women from two local schools, Kings Norton Girls’ School and Waverley School, who were aged 12-15 during the project, investigated social and political change by looking at different ways of campaigning and protesting by women who wanted the right to vote. The young women involved in the project believed that the Birmingham suffrage campaigners were an important part of their heritage. While some of those involved had some prior knowledge of the suffragettes, often little is known or understood by young women about the histories of women involved in the campaign that lived and acted locally. Fight for the Right aimed to re-dress the balance by exploring women’s voting history from a local perspective, focusing specifically on the activities of the Birmingham suffrage movement between 1909 and 1914. While primarily a local history project, participants also considered social and cultural change within women’s rights today and explored ideas about voting and politics.

Wide Eyed with Archives

Every time I wander through an archive store I get the same thrill from what is around me - a doorway into every imaginable subject, from its early beginnings to the present. Thursday was my last day working for Birmingham Archives & Heritage service. I’ve had an amazing 11 years working as a creative learning officer, an outreach and education worker, an engagement co-ordinator, a collections curator. The names have changed a bit but the core of the work, opening up Birmingham’s archive collections to people was constant throughout and with it the privilege of unfettered access to thousands of documents that tell the history of the City and it’s people.

A week before I left, I accompanied Paganel School on their year 6 trip to London to visit The National Archives, a repeat visit from last year for a school that has it’s own archive and a weekly archive after school club. Those kids know about archives first hand, they have catalogued collections, repackaged photographs and have captured their peers’ experiences of SATs and residentials for the next generation. They have helped preserve, build and capture the life of their school and know their story exists within it.

At the The National Archives we had a rare behind the scenes tour showing us just one of their 5 storage areas housing millions of documents. Our amazing guide wowed the children with tales of Jack the Ripper papers, and Elizabeth I’s signature, but it was the thought that they were also all already in there, listed on the census, (even though they’d need to wait another 90 years to see them) that really excited them. We only had time to look at one original document, a Victorian Child Prisoner’s record, detained for 15 days at age 11 for running away from school. The Paganel children were suitably shocked, not only at the sentence for a child the same age as they are, but at the diet which didn’t include any fruit or vegetables.

They interrogated the photos like old hands, inferring meaning from what they spotted and constructing stories as to how people had come to be in that situation. They used their own experiences from looking at archives and their own experiences as children to imagine the past and draw parallels with now. I noticed those same observation skills later when we walked through London back to Euston and they commented on the busyness of the Capital, the many homeless people we saw, the different coloured buses, landmarks that they’d only seen on the tv before.

Archives open eyes, to what was and has been, to what hasn’t been saved and needs to be and to what’s going on around us and how we fit into it. An endless source of stories and potential to open up the past and to inspire us for the future, outreach officer or school child.