The project sought to capture a moment in Manchester’s history, 100 years on from the Suffragette movement that was so rooted in the lives of women in our city. It acknowledged that although women now have the right to vote, our voices are not always heard or given the platform to influence. Women’s Words wanted to hear what it’s like to be a woman living, working and growing in Manchester today, and to value those experiences by creating a new archive of women’s life writing, to create a safe space for women to record their lives, their achievements and contributions.
Wordplay’s contribution was to lead on the creative development of the project. Inspired by the protest activities of the Suffragettes, we designed a workshop programme that worked on two levels. My Own Story workshops (named after Emmeline Pankhurst’s autobiography) were open to the any woman with a connection to Manchester and interested in submitting a story. Led by life writers Michelle Green and Kate Field, these workshops explored different life writing techniques and supported individuals to identify stories they may like to share.
The second workshop programme, Words for Women, engaged with three different groups of women who are, arguably, the disenfranchised voices of 2017 – women seeking asylum, women surviving domestic violence and women experiencing life on the street. Wordplay writers and visual artists, Lucy May Schofield, Emily Hayes, Suzanne Smith, Michelle Green, Tasneem Perry and Harriet Morgan-Shami worked with these groups to create new text based artworks. These artworks were inspired by protest techniques such as Votes for Women sashes worn by Suffragettes, printmaking, pavement chalking and form spoiling all of which harnessed the power of words to reveal truth and influence.
At the end of the process, these artworks were displayed in an exhibition at Central Library and the workshops documented in this beautiful new version of the Suffragette magazine, along with a selection of writing submitted to the archive.
We also commissioned three Manchester based writers Rosie Garland, Reshma Ruia and Alex Keelan to respond to the project’s themes in new life writing pieces, and these were included too.
Our workshop programmes started towards the end of October and quickly revealed a diverse wealth of stories and a tangible desire to share them. Our open workshops at Longsight, Crumpsall and Chorlton libraries attracted women from many different walks of life and inspired many emotional responses, allowing space for stories that may have not been told before. Our Words for Women workshops worked with women accessing support from Manchester Women’s Aid, Women’s Voices and asylum rights campaign group United for Change. We began our sessions by focusing on exploring the history of the Suffragette movement in the UK leading to conversations about women’s rights in other countries and individual experiences in this country. Voting is still a right denied to most of the women we have met in these vulnerable groups.
Since the projects launch in August 2017 the response was incredible. Nearly 300 stories were submitted to the archive and we were asked to visit and deliver workshops to groups as diverse as Lady Pedal Women’s Cycling Group, MCR Feminists, the Proud Trust Women’s Health Group and a joint Manchester WI’s collective. We received such a positive welcome from everyone and feel like we have tapped into a real need for women’s voices to be heard.
