This weekend the Museum of London is hosting a fantastic weekend of celebration and workshops on the theme of Suffragettes and Women’s Rights. Starting today, the weekend will continue until 4pm tomorrow afternoon and offers – for free! – a vast range of different experiences and opportunities.
The Museum has a special exhibition showing a film about the Suffragettes featuring the reflections of many contemporary figures who stand today for women’s rights and human rights generally. They also have a number of artefacts on display including Emmeline Pankhurst’s Hunger Strike medal and Suffragette badges, jewellery and clothing. Visitors can find out the history of the movement and how the Vote for Women was slowly and painfully won.
All over the Museum were different activities going on throughout the day. We headed first to the Make More Noise Workshop, hosted by Nosy Crow publishers and writer Katherine Woodfine, where children could make Suffragette badges, use objects and photographs to inspire some creative writing of their own and have an Edwardian-style sepia photograph taken of them sporting their badges. The workshop was advertising a new anthology of stories about Suffragettes written for young women, Make More Noise, including the work of writers such as Woodfine, Jeanne Willis, Emma Carroll and many more. My daughter has been lying on the sofa reading it since we got home. The link is to Amazon but it’s better to go along to the Museum and buy your copy there; you might even be able to get it signed!
Then we went next door to the Banner-thon, part of the 100 Banners project: ‘To mark the anniversary of the Representation of the People Act, the 100 Banners will be part of the national commemorations and be processed at the March4Women on March 4th from Parliament to Trafalgar Square, led by Helen Pankhurst, will feature at the Royal Albert Hall on International Women’s Day on March 8th, and at the WOW Festival at the Southbank on the 10th and 11th of March 2018.’
We were able to use different fabrics to create pennants while younger Suffragettes used very effective paint printing techniques and coloured pens to make their own banners. ‘Mrs Pankhurst’ and some of her sisters-in-arms gave a rousing speech and we all carried our banners on a Rally, singing Suffragette anthems, cheered by other museum visitors as we went. At the end of the March we heard speeches for and against the Votes for Women movement, accompanied by much cheering or booing and heckling as appropriate, as well as a brief history of how women’s rights have progressed since 1918 and what still remains to be won today. It was an exciting experience to be part of the March and Rally, even though they were mostly a reconstruction of similar rallies of the early 1900s; one can imagine how much more rousing and thrilling it must have been to be marching back then alongside other women all fighting for the same cause. My elder daughter absolutely loved it; she was cheering and waving her banner without shyness or self-consciousness. Dressed in purple, white and green she already looked the part!
We went to a storytelling session where we had the story of Sophia ‘The Suffragette Princess’ performed for us in the Pleasure Gardens Exhibit. My daughter wrote a Suffragette poem at the poetry workshop stand and played an amazing 3D version of ‘Pank-a-Squith’, originally a flat-board game sold in aid of the Women’s Suffrage Movement and poking fun at Mrs Pankhurst and the WSPU’s (Women’s Social and Political Union) continued skirmishes with the Prime Minister Lord Asquith. It was also hoped that the game would bring discussion of the ‘women question’ into people’s homes and families, igniting debate and support. The lady running the games sessions had turned the board game into a revolving tower structure while players spiraled up to reach a huge Houses of Parliament at the zenith dealing with imprisonment, politicians and other hazards as they marched on.
It was a full, exciting and inspiring day. We were so glad we went; if you have a chance go tomorrow and have a go yourselves!
Other books to read to learn more about the Suffragettes:
- Things a Bright Girl Can Do by Sally Nichols. A fairly new book for older readers which tells of Evelyn’s immersion into the world of the suffragettes and their fight for freedom and of her own exploration of her sexuality.
- Opal Plumstead by Jacqueline Wilson. As much a book about WWI as the Suffrage movement this is a sad story about how one girl is affected by the calatclysmic changes going on in England in the 1910s and how she faces them, stepping out of her father’s shadow and into a new life of thinking and working for herself.
- The Suffragettes. A petite and inexpensive volume which brings together writings by and abut Suffragettes to provide a ‘potted history’.
- My Story: Suffragette by Carol Drinkwater. A new centenary edition of Carol Drinkwater’s excellent book in the My Story series.
- A Question of Courage by Marjorie Darke. This was on the English syllabus when I was at secondary school but appears to be out of print now. It tells the story of Emily who moves from Birmingham to London and becomes caught up in the Suffragette movement.
- The Princess and the Suffragette by Holly Webb. This book is both a sequel to Frances Hodgson Burnett’s A Little Princess and a story about Votes for Women. It follows Lottie, a pupil at Miss Minchin’s Academy where Sara Crewe’s story was set and her experiences in the world of fighting for suffrage.
- My Best Friend the Suffragette by Sally Morgan. Published on 1st March this is a story for younger readers about Christine and Mary, two friends from families with differing views on the Woman Question.
Breathing in books 