dear sisters: activists' archives
This exhibition ran from Thursday 21 March until Sunday 1 September 2024, at the Weston Gallery, Lakeside Arts.
Our exhibition presented an archive curated by the Nottingham Feminist Archive Group, a collective of local women, some of whom were active in the Women’s Liberation Movement. They embarked on a project to interview the former activists they were still in contact with and brought us their personal memories, zines, photographs, posters, papers, campaign badges and T-shirts to form the Feminist Archive (East Midlands).
They also set to work developing and preserving the collection of feminist magazines at the Nottingham Women’s Centre Library, the duplicate copies of which were kindly donated to form the basis of our new Feminist Publications Collection. By preserving these living histories, future generations are armed with the knowledge of their struggles. The fight goes on.
This exhibition was curated by University of Nottingham Libraries, Manuscripts and Special Collections, with advice from the Nottingham Feminist Archive Group.
Exhibition themes
Six exhibition boards were on display in the Gallery. One of the boards can be downloaded or viewed online as Adobe PDF.
Further Research
Items from our collections are available to consult in the Manuscripts and Special Collections reading room on King's Meadow Campus.
Links to our catalogues, and specific collections relating to the themes featuring in the exhibition can be found below.
Films: Our series of films will be coming soon
Nottingham Feminist Archive Group member Margaret Davies talks about the Nottingham Women Against Pit Closures Campaign during the 1984-5 miners' strike.
Curator Dr Ursula Ackrill presents a drawing of the "Womanspace" exhibition house, an art exhibition/installation organised by members of the Nottingham Women's Liberation Group, in 1975.
Nottingham Feminist Archive Group member Tina Pamplin shares her memories of joining the Nottingham Women's Liberation Group in the 1970s, and the National Abortion Campaign
.
From the blog
Read our blogs and Discover newsletter article about items featured in the dear sisters exhibition.
All blogs relating to the feminist collections can be found on our blog site: https://blogs.nottingham.ac.uk/manuscripts/category/cataloguing-2/feminist/
Introducing the Feminist Archive (East Midlands)
An introduction to the Feminist Archive (East Midlands) and the Feminist Publications Collection at the University of Nottingham
Go to blog post
How the Feminist Archive (East Midlands) was created
Find out about the beginnings of the archive and the woman-hours invested in its creation.
Go to blog post
Audrey Beecham and the Nottingham Women's Liberation Group
Audrey Beecham (1915-1989) was a University of Nottigham lecturer, poet and feminist.
Go to article, on pages 6-7
Events
A programme of associated talks and events were held at Lakeside Arts.
Recordings of some of these talks will be made available on this webpage shortly.
Lunchtime Talks
A working class woman is something to be
Dr Lisa McKenzie, who grew up in the coal-mining town of Sutton-in-Ashfield, is a self-described “working class academic”, exploring how the white working class in the UK are perceived. She talked about her the experiences of women in her family who were involved in the miners’ strikes of the 1980s and union activity in the textiles industry.
Meet the activists
A panel discussion featuring members of the Nottingham Feminist Archive Group and their interviewees, exploring in depth some of the themes which emerged from the interviews with the women activists.
A recording of this talk will be available shortly
Black women activists
Dr Panya Banjoko, founder of the Nottingham Black Archive, talked about Black women’s activism in the UK and highlights some of the women who feature in the Archive.
This event was not recorded but see the website for the Nottingham Black Archive for more information
No More Page 3 Campaign
Nottingham nurse, Lisa Clarke, talked about her involvement in the national campaign of 2012 to 2015, which sought an end to The Sun’s use of photographs of topless women, which it had been publishing on the third page of its tabloid newspaper since 1970.
A recording of this talk will be available shortly.
Other events
Guided tours of the dear sisters exhibition
These tours have now finished but contact Manuscripts and Special Collections if you would like to arrange a group tour of the gallery to learn more about the stories behind the items on display.
Dear Sisters Feminist Zine
A series of zine-making workshops were held in May 2024 in collaboration with Nottingham Trent University’s Periodicals and Print Culture Research Group. More than thirty Nottingham women attended these workshops which were led by Ioney Smallhorne and Aikaterini Paraskevopoulou. The workshops resulted in a zine which has been edited by Catherine Clay and Katie Jones and produced by Dizzy Ink. The zine includes a foreword by Nadia Whittome, feminist, activist and MP for Nottingham East. Copies of the zine will be available in the Feminist Publications Collection, at the Women's Library at Nottingham Women's Centre, and at various local libraries. A limited number of copies will be available to purchase from Five Leaves Bookshop with the profit from sales going to Broxtowe Women's Project.
Campaign corner
A corner of the Weston Gallery was used to give updates of current campaigns which relate to the theme of the exhibition. For example:
Campaign M: Launched in January 2024 as a series of Linkedin posts, this campaign published gritty, hard-hitting facts within a solemn narrative to highlight the darker and much less discussed sides of motherhood.
Get the latest updates
Follow Manuscripts and Special Collections Exhibitions on @mssUniNott to keep up to date with the latest exhibition news, or read the latest issue of our free magazine, Discover. If you would like to receive regular (monthly) updates on the Feminist Archive, email us to join our Sisters and Supporters mailing list.
Dear Sisters Feminist Zine
Produced as a result of a series of workshops held as part of the exhibition, the Dear Sister Feminist Zine is the creative output of a collaboration with Catherine Clay and Katie Jones of the Periodicals and Print Culture Research Group at NTU and was printed and designed by MOAN and Dizzy Ink. The workshops were run by local creatives Ioney Smallhorne and Aikatarina Paraskevopoulou and involved a tour of the gallery followed by an exploration of some of the exhibition's themes through collage and blackout poetry. The zine, which features a foreword by Nadia Whittime MP, will be available to purchase in Five Leaves Bookshop https://fiveleavesbookshop.co.uk/ with proceeds going to the Broxtowe Women’s Project https://broxtowewomensproject.org.uk/ to help with their work offering support and advice for women, children and young people affected by domestic abuse.