Countywide Project Celebrates Women of Cumbria
100 years after women were first given the right to vote, a unique collaboration will celebrate the many inspiring, and unsung, women of Cumbria.
From pioneering suffragists, to medical marvels, a number of women well worthy of celebration have come from Cumbria, yet still go unrecognised next to their male counterparts. Now in 2018, the centenary of the first British women being given the vote, a new project is set to inspire the young women of the county today.
A major artistic collaboration, Celebrating Women of Cumbria is a creative project involving 11 local museums working with girls and women from Girlguiding, the WI, the Trefoil Guild and Soroptimists International. The project, which has been funded by Arts Council England, has seen the community groups work with a Cumrbian artist to create a banner inspired by their local museum’s collection. Each unique banner will be on display at the museums throughout 2018 and will be showcased in a parade in Carlisle on Saturday 3 March 2018, to celebrate International Women’s Day.
Alongside this, a trail has been created by the museums which will reveal several stories of the amazing and often unsung women in our communities. Throughout 2018, exhibitions and events will be held at each museum, to reflect on contemporary and historic roles women play in our county.
Beacon Museum – Edith Brown
And there is something to be learnt for everyone, as the artist, Karen MacDougall discovered, she said: “I’ve learnt so much, I’ve been on an interesting journey, discovering all these things. Actually seeing some of the wonderful and really inspirational Cumbrian women who have come before, who really wanted to aspire to all sorts of things and couldn’t see why they couldn’t do it. They went out of their way to make it happen, even though society was against them at the time.”
Karen, who also worked on the Hadrian’s Cavalry project last year, has delighted in collaborating with women of all different ages and backgrounds, she said: “It’s challenging, as an artist working with a wide age range, but it’s really interesting because you get different perspectives, particularly when all the groups are together there was a real cross-fertilisation of ideas.”
Karen continued: “These projects change people, maybe from this some of the younger women might think about creative jobs or even working with museums.”
With women such as Dame Edith Brown from Whitehaven, the founder of the first medical training facility for women in Asia, celebrated at The Beacon Museum; the Carrs’ Cracker Packers at Tullie House; Women’s Stories from Regiment at The Cumbria Museum of Military Life and of course, Cumbria’s suffragettes and suffragists. There are simply too many fascinating stories to recount here.
Karen added: “Each museum has a different slant on inspirational women. We hope that lots of people will go and look at them all and enjoy what they find, because there’s a really wide range of interpretation that’s going to be on display.”
A Facebook Page “Celebrating Women of Cumbria” has also been created to offer a joint platform for stories from the participating museums. But it is also to encourage the sharing of stories of extraordinary women living in our communities today. Tara Vallente, who is organising the PR on behalf of the project, explained: “One of the things about the project is getting more people to share more stories about more amazing women across the county.”
Keswick Museum – Crosthwaite Vicarage 1870 by Lucy Gipps
Tara is hopeful that the project will not only teach young women about their local and social history, but to have a bit more faith in themselves, she added: “Now we are much better at empowering young women and girls to believe in themselves and I think they will be able to take a huge amount of inspiration from the women they learn about.
“Some of these women were real pioneers, it makes any girl believe that she can change the world.”
If you know of an ordinary or an extraordinary woman whose story deserves sharing, please upload a photo and the story to the ‘Celebrating Women of Cumbria’ group on Facebook.
Women of Cumbria Events
Votes for Women: Suffrage and Women’s Lives (all year)
Museum of Lakeland Life & Industry
Edith Brown: Medicine Woman (13 January – 25 March)
The Beacon Museum, Whitehaven
A series of exhibitions at the Wordsworth Museum (Throughout 2018)
Wordsworth Trust, Grasmere
Spinning the Colours of Lakeland: Annie Garnett’s Spinnery (24 February – 3 June)
The Ruskin Museum, Coniston
Women in Cumbria (March 2018)
Tullie House, Carlisle
Lorna Graves: Memories of Belonging (1 March – 1 June)
Tales of Dorothy Wordsworth and servants’ lives (March – October)
Wordsworth House and Garden, Cockermouth
A Woman’s Place: Ambleside’s Feminist Legacy (3 March – 31 October)
The Armitt Museum and Library, Ambleside
Follow The Drum – Women’s Stories from the Regiment 8 March – 13 May
Cumbria’s Museum of Military Life, Carlisle Castle
Elizabeth Smith 1776 -1806 Blue Stocking, Linguist, Fell Walker 9 June – 9 September
The Ruskin Museum, Coniston
The Senhouse Museum, Maryport June 2018 – March 2019
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