We welcomed Cherry Ann Knott from the Heritage Lottery Fund, project archivist Sarah Cuthill presented the contents of Ellen’s archive, and Ellen provided a response.

The evening also launched our booklet What Can History Do? which is available for a donation through this website.

After the formal presentations, attendees had the opportunity to browse material from Ellen’s archive, as well as have good chat.

Thanks to everyone who came and participated in the wider project. We are working on some new ideas for funding bids, but will of course keep this blog updated with regular information about relevant events in Bristol and beyond.

Ellen’s archive is catalogued and available to view in the Feminist Archive South, so don’t forget you can pay us a visit if you are curious about its contents.

In the meantime, enjoy the photos!

The post Final event for Ellen Malos’ Archives – documentation appeared first on Feminist Archive South.

The majority of Ellen’s activist life is dedicated to the ongoing struggle to end Violence Against Women.

For the final workshop in this series, Ellen is joined by colleagues who helped develop vital services to protect and support vulnerable women in Bristol and the UK.

Drawing on material from Ellen’s Archive we will look at the history and development of Bristol Women’s Aid and link it to the wider national context.

We will explore questions such as:

• How and why did the Women’s Liberation movement come to support women and their children who were experiencing violence within the home, and to build an autonomous movement against it?

• How has it now become supported by local and national governments ?

• How did Bristol Women’s Aid begin and what did it do?

• How did things change after the early 1970s?

• Where are we now?

The post Final Workshop – Bristol Women’s Aid: Saturday 20 July, MShed, 1-5pm appeared first on Feminist Archive South.

The archive is taking shape. Following the survey at Ellen’s, I had to weed duplicates and non-relevant material from the boxes. This takes up a lot of table and floor space! The archive shadowers came to four sessions in May and June and contributed to the next stage of the work, arranging the material into categories. With a personal archive such as this, some of the arrangement is straightforward; some can be a little less obvious.

The ‘shadows’ worked on Women’s Aid, NAFE, Women’s Liberation Movement, and History papers. For them the breadth of material seemed to be striking, and for me the opportunity to discuss the papers and to make collective decisions was definitely useful. We began to transfer the archive into more appropriate housing, using acid-free four-flap folders and records management boxes.

On June 27th there was a chance to talk briefly about the work in progress at one of the Feminist Archive South workshops. By the end of June the arranging was nearly done, and I was using my initial lists to describe the individual folders. The need for detail varies from collection to collection, but this can be revised in the next stage of the job, which will be inputting on the CALM system at Special Collections.

The post Archiving Update – May/ June appeared first on Feminist Archive South.

The post Photos from recent workshops appeared first on Feminist Archive South.

We will be watching a TV programme featuring Ellen Malos and Germaine Greer, who appeared on the discussion show Women and Waugh in 1984.

The programme is fascinating not only for the issues the women discuss, but also for how Germaine and Ellen subvert how women are set up against each other in discussion shows as a form of public entertainment – the name of the programme itself is a pun on this, presumably!

The programme is also worth seeing for the sheer range of facial expressions Germaine Greer pulls, contrasted with the demure intelligence of Ellen.

Join us! Its free to attend, all welcome, and we will have a discussion about the issues raised in the film afterwards.

The post Ellen Malos & Germain Greer on Women and Waugh – This Thursday, 7pm @ MShed appeared first on Feminist Archive South.

After a brief tour of magazines such as Spare Rib, Shocking Pink, Red Rag and Bad Attitude, newspapers such as Outwrite and Shrew, Enough: The Journal of Bristol Women’s Liberation and Fowaad! the newsletter for the Organisation of Women of Asian and African Descent, we leapt into action and made our own publication.

A trip to a local stationery store is planned to reproduce it, and copies will be available at future workshops!

The post Action Photos from the Feminist Print Media Workshop! appeared first on Feminist Archive South.

Thanks to all who have booked a place and expressed interest – its really encouraging to know that there is an audience and need for these activities, it helps us for future funding bids.

Big apologies though to anyone who has missed out – we promise to run similar programmes in the future.

The post Archive Workshops – Now Full! appeared first on Feminist Archive South.

Sunday 9 June 2013 @ MShed 1-5pm. All welcome.

Bristol: Voices from the Women’s Liberation Movement facilitated by June Hannam and Kath Holden from the  West of England and South Wales Women’s History Network.

Most women took part in ‘second wave feminism’ at a grass roots, local level. How do we find out why they became involved and what they hoped to achieve? Can we recover their voices and, if we do, how can we interpret them?

This workshop will look at different ways that historians can try to recover women’s voices. The first part will look at documentary evidence, including newsletters, pamphlets and photographs. The second part will focus on oral testimony: participants will be invited to compare  summaries, full transcripts and original recordings of interviews.  The workshop will explore memory and the ways in which participants construct different stories of the movements in which they took part.

June Hannam is an emeritus professor and Kath Holden a visiting research fellow in history at the University of the West of England. They are co-chairs of the West of England and South Wales Women’s History Network. They both have research interests in  gender history. June Hannam specialises in labour and feminist history and Kath Holden in oral history and history of the family.

Recent publications include Katherine Holden: The Shadow of Marriage: Singleness in England, 1914-1960 (2007) and June Hannam, Feminism (2012).

The post Workshop information 9 June appeared first on Feminist Archive South.

Feminist Archive South Trustee Deborah Withers was the guest on Bristol Community FM‘s LGBT radio show Shout Out on Thursday 25 April 2013.

She talks about the current workshop programme, and the wider Heritage Lottery Funded project to catalogue Ellen Malos’ archives.

The post The FAS on Shout Out appeared first on Feminist Archive South.

The Feminist Archive South is offering a unique opportunity for people to shadow the project archivist as she catalogues Ellen Malos’ collection.

Ellen Malos was a key figure in the Bristol Women’s Liberation Movement. The first Women’s Centre opened in the basement of her house in 1973, and her work supporting vulnerable women has been recognised through an Honoury Doctorate at Bristol University (2006), and in the naming of the Next Link Women’s Safe House, ‘Ellen Malos House’ (12 June 2007). Ellen’s archive comprises rare historical material, including documents that have shaped some of the most significant legal and policy transformations within British history relating to gender quality.

You can attend up to four sessions with the archivist, and they will take place during weekdays in the day-time. You do not have to attend all sessions – although if you want to, this is also fine!

This is a great chance to informally learn the skills, practices and knowledge required to do archival work. You also get the chance to look at a load of interesting material about feminist history!

Even if you do not want to pursue archiving as a career, these activities will be relevant to people interested in the history of gender equality, in particular activism relating to women’s aid and violence against women.

Sessions will take place from April-June 2013. Please contact us to arrange a session.

Participation bursaries are available to cover things like childcare, travel and accommodation costs (if coming from outside of Bristol). Please let us know about this when you make an enquiry.

The post Archivist Shadowing Workshops – Call for Participants appeared first on Feminist Archive South.