Hidden Footprints

We are thrilled to announce a revival of the Hidden Footprints project once again at Merchant City Festival 2018. 

Following its success at last year’s festival, it is an exciting prospect to revisit a project that brings together a diverse range of women from across Glasgow to develop a promenade performance that roams through the streets of Merchant City. This promenade performance directed by Jen Edgar and performed by The Women’s Creative Company will explore female narratives hidden within spaces in the Merchant City. A walking tour with a difference, the audience will have the rare chance to listen in on lively conversations, hear protests re-enacted and the sharing of stories and narrative on the fascinating historical women who lived, worked in and visited our city. 

As we learned in the development of last year’s performance, the stories of women who have shaped and made an impact - big or small - to our city are often silenced or overlooked. The performers shine a spotlight on the often nameless and unrecorded women from our past and present, bringing our streets and their hidden histories to life. Combining historical fact with personal reflections, we follow in the footsteps of the women who went before us. 

In February, we held a wonderful event at Glasgow Women’s Library to launch the audio version of last year’s performances and lead short creative sessions that put Glasgow Women's Heritage at the heart of each exploration. We feel the performances at last year’s festival truly resonated with audiences. One person who joined us on the promenade performance in particular felt Hidden Footprints made a big impact:

“This was amazing! Many thanks to all who were involved. You animated a needed message with vitality on the streets of Glasgow - it was full of colour, full of life, full of vigour! You sowed the seeds of liberation and also celebrated a neglected part of humanity - WOMAN.”

The Women’s Creative Company exists so that women of all ages and cultures from across Glasgow can come together and share their experiences, ideas and creative energy. The free practical and playful weekly workshops provide a safe space where women can express passions and concerns through creative exploration, where friendships are built and exciting performance work is made.

Sharing little-known tales from the past alongside contemporary musings on the spaces and people of Merchant City, Hidden Footprints is an imaginative, charming and thought-provoking exploration of what these streets mean to us and what they represented to the women before us. 

Click here for tickets and further information about the performances.  Our meeting point is the City Halls in Merchant City. Performances on Sat 11 Aug run at 12.00, 2.30 and 4.30pm; performances on Sun 12 Aug run at 12.00 and 2.30pm.

This month the Women’s Creative Company were invited to a tour of the collections at Glasgow Women’s Library. The group braved the cold December weather to be welcomed into the warm and inviting space at this true national treasure dedicated to empowering women and women’s heritage. Thanks to our guide for the day Krizstina, who gave us hot tea and biscuits and talked us through the impressive history of the library, a story of resilience and dedication, much like the many women it celebrates. 

The lending library is free to join and as well as a vast collection of lending books, the library stores a large array of historical and contemporary archives and artifacts. Krizstina laid out a selection of artifacts and told us the important stories behind each piece, then we were given a quick tour of the back room archives before being left alone to explore. 

Rummaging through back issues of Spare Rib magazine we were deeply impressed with how relevant many of the issues being discussed in the articles, going back as far as the 70s, were still relevant today. We questioned how much progress has been made and how much is still to be achieved. 

As 2018 draws to a close, we would like to thank our funders Heritage Lottery Fund and Glasgow City Council for supporting the Hidden Footprints project. The group and team have been hard at work creating an audio version of our performance, to be shared in the new year, which focuses on the hidden histories and untold stories of women in our city. 

Having focused on the Merchant City area as part of the performance, we are delighted to extend our reach even further, investigating contemporary and historical women’s heritage from a wider city and national landscape.  

Hidden Footprints Short Film

“Mrs Smith. Age 45. Cleaner. Scottish. Lives at 47 King Street. Widowed. No children. Granted 1 shilling relief from the parish.

Mrs Sutherland. 40. Clothlapper. Lives at 67 Rottenrow. Widowed. 2 children. Granted temporary relief from the parish of 1 shilling and sixpence plus one meal. Special remarks: no bed in house – very destitute.

Mrs Scott. 50. Irish. Lives at 47 Rottenrow. Widowed. Four children. Granted temporary relief from the parish of 1 shilling and 6 pence. Special remarks: She has a dead son lying in the house.”

This is all the information you can find about these Glaswegian women, whose lives had been condensed into record statements from 1841, neglecting their wisdom, experiences and contribution to Glasgow. We deserve to hear their stories, and they deserve to have their stories shared.

Hidden Footprints, our upcoming promenade performance as part of the Merchant City Festival, takes audiences on a tour and presents honest, funny and poignant stories depicting the lives of Glasgow’s forgotten women as we arrive at each city centre landmark.  

“So there are more streets in Merchant City named after wells than after women?”

Have you thought about the street names around our city and the people to whom they have been dedicated? The Women’s Creative Company question the huge disparity between the many men celebrated throughout our city and the distinct lack of the women who walked and shaped the streets of Glasgow.

Hidden Footprints takes the audience into the past, celebrating Glaswegian women’s history of protesting, campaigning and pursuing justice for all, as well as painting a vivid picture of the hardships women still face in 2017.  We explore Glasgow’s shameful connection to slavery, as well as highlighting the fact that slavery is not a thing of the past.

“Women’s history in Merchant City has been harder to uncover than men’s history. That’s because their roles are undervalued and they were restricted in what they’re allowed to achieve by the patriarchy. Today we can vote, our equality is enshrined in law but are we equal?” Teresa

We are thrilled to present Hidden Footprints and open up dialogue about what women, especially in Glasgow, have endured and what needs to be done to achieve true equality for all. Performed by the Women’s Creative Company, Directed by Victoria Beesley, and part of Merchant City Festival 2017, Hidden Footprints (Sat 29 and Sun 30 July) aims to bring some of these (and many others not mentioned) to life in an exciting promenade performance that lead its audience on a tour of Merchant City, shining the spotlight on the past, questioning our present and looking towards an equal future.

Full details and ticket information can be found on our website:

http://www.amomentspeace.co.uk/hidden-footprints.html

Hidden Footprints is supported by Heritage Lottery and Glasgow City Council and is part of Merchant City Festival 2017

One of the satisfactions of being part of the Hidden Footprints project is being able to look at our city’s structures, statues and public spaces, and see not what lies directly before our eyes, but what is missing instead.

Glasgow Women’ s Heritage is rich with hidden histories of the brilliant, brave and hardworking women who shaped our streets.

Yet these stories are not tangible things we can touch or see, like statues, buildings or street names. Instead they need unearthed from documents, records and archives. Even then, what is not recorded speaks volumes about how many women were simply not deemed worthy of being written into history.

The Women’ s Creative Company have set out to change all that with their new venture Hidden Footprints, digging deep into Glasgow’s past, giving voices to the shadows of the past and shining a spotlight on the sometimes shameful histories that Glasgow has traditionally kept behind closed archive doors.

As part of the research we were taken on a women’s heritage walk organised by Glasgow Women’s Library. Starting at the site of the Rottenrow where the Glasgow Royal Maternity Hospital once stood,  we were guided through the street of Merchant City and learned  about some of the amazing women who paved the way for us today (photograph by group member and talented photographer Margaret McMillan).

From Socialist activists, fighters, journalists and broadcasters Jenny Patrick and Ethel McDonald to scandalous Victorian alleged poisoner Madeline Smith, we learned of some of the integral women who walked before us. Taking strong independent women to different extremes, like Miss Cranston who encouraged women into business and pioneered for better care of Glasgow’s poor, to the axe wielding ‘bar room smasher’ Carrie A Nation, who visited Glasgow to speak on temperance.

Part of Merchant City Festival 2017, Hidden Footprints aims to bring some of these (and many others not mentioned) to life in an exciting promenade performance that lead its audience on a tour of Merchant City, shining the spotlight on the past, questioning our present and looking towards an equal future.

Full details and ticket information can be found on our website:

http://www.amomentspeace.co.uk/hidden-footprints.html

Hidden Footprints is supported by Heritage Lottery and Glasgow City Council and is part of Merchant City Festival 2017

Last weekend saw the exciting unveiling of W.O.M.AN. a statue created as part of the As I See It project that represents women throughout Glasgow. The statue was unveiled on Saturday 17th June in South Block, Glasgow, and is still open to the public. The Women’s Creative Company has been working with Terra Incognita in collaboration with ceramicist Jen Smith to create W.O.M.A.N (Workers, Outrageous, Mighty, Able, Notable), a symbol of women, past and present. The unveiling of the statue was a chance for the four community groups that Terrra Incognita worked with to shine a spotlight on the hidden histories and untold stories missing from Glasgow’s landscape

Each component of W.O.M.A.N’s structure has an important symbolism:

“Her feet and torso represent history. The foundations on which we are built. The guts and the heart of the women who got us to where we are today. The head is covered in names contemporary women are called, positive and negative. Written on the wheelchair are our hopes for women in the future. The statue is covered with flowers, some flourishing and some withering – this is a celebration of the steps forward women have made, and an acknowledgement that there is still more to do before women are perceived as true equals.”

The statue is the culmination of workshops with the group, exploring key women who have shaped communities throughout the country and important themes that continue to affect us today. Discussions have centred on the life of political activists such as Mary Barbour, one of the leading figures in the Glasgow rent strikes of 1915, and subsequently reflecting on the discrimination and adversity many in society face. In relation to Glasgow’s connection to the slave trade, the group’s conversation soon turned to whether we could draw parallels between the horrors of slavery in the past and contemporary equivalents.

W.O.M.A.N will be making another significant appearance in this year’s Merchant City Festival as part of The Women’s Creative Company’s moving promenade performance piece, Hidden Footprints. This promenade performance through Merchant City is inspired by the historical and contemporary voices of women in our city. Combining historical fact with personal reflections, we follow in the footsteps of the women who went before us. Sharing little-known tales from the past alongside contemporary musings on the spaces and people of Merchant City, this is an imaginative, charming and thought-provoking exploration of what these streets mean to us and what they represented to the women before us.

Be sure to visit our Eventbrite page for the Hidden Footprints performance and keep updated as the project develops and takes shape! http://bit.ly/2sRfQUk 

We are excited to be supported by Heritage Lottery Fund. From World Heritage Sites to ancient monuments, listed buildings to historic battlefields, cultural traditions to our myths, tales and legends, the 2017 Year of History, Heritage and Archaeology, running from 1 January to 31 December will shine a spotlight on Scotland’s fascinating past, some of our greatest figures, attractions and icons, as well as our hidden gems.

A Moment’s Peace is thrilled to announce Hidden Footprints, a project bringing together a diverse range of women from across Glasgow to develop a promenade performance as part of the Merchant City Festival. This promenade performance directed by Vickie Beesley and performed by The Women’s Creative Company will explore female narratives hidden within spaces in the Merchant City, and empower participants to bring to life untold stories of women within Glasgow’s history. 

Combining historical fact with personal reflections, we follow in the footsteps of the women who went before us. Sharing little-known tales from the past alongside contemporary musings on the spaces

The project coincides with many events all sharing the goal of amplifying women’s stories. As part of the As I See It project, The Women’s Creative Company has been working with Terra Incognita to create a new statue that represents women throughout Glasgow, which will be unveiled on Saturday 17th June in South Block, Glasgow. As part of the research process The Women’s Creative Company have undertaken various site visits across Merchant City and Saltmarket area, visited the Mitchell Library to explore their archives and recently participated in a Women’s Heritage Walking Tour run by Glasgow Women’s Library. This tour in Merchant City explored the lives of women who worked and lived in the area.

The next month will see the women’s promenade performance take shape ahead of its Merchant City Festival appearance, updating you on workshops and the progress of the promenade performance as this exciting project continues.

This project is funded by Heritage Lottery Fund and Glasgow Life, and will be part of Merchant City Festival 2017.  

We are excited to be supported by Heritage Lottery Fund. From World Heritage Sites to ancient monuments, listed buildings to historic battlefields, cultural traditions to our myths, tales and legends, the 2017 Year of History, Heritage and Archaeology, running from 1 January to 31 December will shine a spotlight on Scotland’s fascinating past, some of our greatest figures, attractions and icons, as well as our hidden gems.