We are using the video sharing website Vimeo – you do not need to be a member to use this valuable resource. Just visit: www.vimeo.com/womenslibrary/makingspace. If you have any problems with viewing the film on Vimeo, please contact us and we will try to help.

If you get any sort of spark from this film, any thoughts or flashes of inspiration, or if you disagree with what it has to say, please feel free to get in touch with us and let us know. We love to hear your comments! Enjoy.

A Film Still

Saturday 12 & Saturday 19 February
11am to 2pm

This event has been rescheduled from December 2010 due to the adverse weather conditions at that time.

If you would like any more information, please contact us online or call Laura on 0141 248 9969.

This course is free. Click here for more information on our new streamlined booking system and to join the library.

But have no fears, Making Space is coming back with a bang. I am absolutely thrilled to reveal that accomplished film-maker Jane McInally is currently working on Making Space: The Movie (official title not yet available)! The film will feature photographs, audio clips, and video footage of the many stages of Making Space, from the selection of artists to their final exhibitions. If all goes to plan, it will be possible to access the film from this website in the near future.

We are also looking forward to 2 events over the next couple of weeks. We are going to have a celebratory lunch for the Making Space group, to say a big thank you for all the help they gave us with ideas, feedback, and even participation in the final artworks. The group will be first in line to view the Making Space film, after all, they have been the entertaining, enthusiastic and rather essential stars of the show!

Next up, GWL is proud to host the Making Space discussion event. Since the launch of the project, a symposium has been one of the most important things on our agenda. We wanted the chance to discuss our ideas about encouraging diverse women to participate in the arts; and to voice our concerns over the lack of public/permanent representation of women’s cultural contributions in Glasgow. (Did you know there are only 3 statues of women in Glasgow? Do you know who they are?)

We have invited key people involved in the arts, in education, in policy-making and politics, and in equalities and women’s issues, as well as members of the Making Space group and the GWL staff and volunteer team. We want to get everyone together and get talking, with the help of Shauna and Nicky who will be giving presentations on their work and what has been achieved with Making Space so far. The most important aim is to show everyone how important it is for us to reach Phase 2 of the project: to create a new public artwork for Scotland!

- involved in Greenham Common Women’s Peace Camp?
- active in the socialist and feminists movements between 1972-1990?
- active in the North-East of Scotland around the same time?

We are currently gathering oral histories to feature as part of an International Women’s Day 2011 event in Aberdeen. The event will also showcase campaign materials, minutes, badges and other artefacts, photographs, personal letters and diaries. This exciting exhibition will become part of a permanent collection in the GWL Archives.

Greenham Common Banner

We will be recording oral histories in the North-East of Scotland from July 2010 onwards, and accepting donations of relevant materials towards the end of 2010 (unfortunately no earlier than this, due to our imminent move to the Mitchell Library).

If you would like to contribute to the essential preservation of this important history, please contact Morag Smith, National Lifelong Learning Development Worker by email: morag.smith@womenslibrary.org.uk or telephone: 0141 552 8345.

All contributions will be subject to the conditions of Glasgow Women’s Library oral history copyright clearance and deposit policy. It will be necessary for all contributors to complete an oral history copyright clearance and deposit form.

Unsorted Donations is not your usual art exhibition open to all; it is a unique listening experience. The GWL Archives provide a curious setting as visitors tiptoe through the maze of cardboard boxes and wooden pallets, inhaling the dust of historic artefacts, eyes gradually becoming accustomed to the shadowy light. With the use of hidden speakers scattered throughout the space, Nicky Bird violates the standard codes of Archive etiquette by embedding sound into the setting.

Suggesting the importance and poignancy of the GWL’s yet-to-be-catalogued Archives, Unsorted Donations is not only a surprising and haunting experience – it is a truly significant documentation of the lives and histories of diverse women in Glasgow.

Unsorted Donations is part of GWL’s Making Space project, funded by the Scottish Arts Council. If you would like more information about the project, please contact Glasgow Women’s Library at info@womenslibrary.org.uk or by phoning 0141 552 8345. Thanks.

Unsorted Donations invitation

Unsorted Donations is not your usual art exhibition open to all; it is a unique listening experience. The GWL Archives provide a curious setting as visitors tiptoe through the maze of cardboard boxes and wooden pallets, inhaling the dust of historic artefacts, eyes gradually becoming accustomed to the shadowy light. With the use of hidden speakers scattered throughout the space, Nicky Bird violates the standard codes of Archive etiquette by embedding sound into the setting.

Suggesting the importance and poignancy of the GWL’s yet-to-be-catalogued Archives, Unsorted Donations is not only a surprising and haunting experience – it is a truly significant documentation of the lives and histories of diverse women in Glasgow.

Unsorted Donations is part of GWL’s Making Space project, funded by the Scottish Arts Council. If you would like more information about the project, please contact Glasgow Women’s Library at info@womenslibrary.org.uk or by phoning 0141 552 8345. Thanks.

Unsorted Donations invitation

Blue Spine is a collective project, involving contributions from hundreds of women across Scotland. If you would like more information, please follow this link: http://makingspace.womenslibrary.org.uk/2010/03/31/blue-spine-invite/

This is a free event and booking is not necessary, but we would appreciate if you could let us know if you are coming, either by phone (0141 552 8345) or email (info@womenslibrary.org.uk). Thank you.

Blue Spine is a collective project, involving contributions from hundreds of women across Scotland. If you would like more information, please follow this link: http://makingspace.womenslibrary.org.uk/2010/03/31/blue-spine-invite/

This is a free event and booking is not necessary, but we would appreciate if you could let us know if you are coming, either by phone (0141 552 8345) or email (info@womenslibrary.org.uk). Thank you.

Those familiar with the Scottish literary scene may already have a good understanding of Lochhead’s work, with her award winning debut collection and numerous subsequent works firmly establishing her as an exciting and innovative poet. Reprinted and republished numerous times (most notably in larger collection ‘Dreaming Frankenstein’ 1984) ‘Memo for Spring’(1972) made a significant comment on women’s issues in a national and universal context.

Lochhead’s work is refreshing, with an “overtly feminist agenda“ ( BBC biography) often plain to see, proving itself to be a particularly good introduction for those who shy away from poetry due to its perceived inaccessibility.

‘After a warrant sale’ catalogues the dignified departure of a disappointed woman who, having waited her failing marriage out, finally leaves after a warrant sale strips the residual material value from her home. Lochhead admits that she cannot understand why Ann stayed ‘long past the death of love’, stating that she (Lochhead) is very young and expects, with a melancholic tone, ‘not too much of love- just that it should completely solve me’. In one line Lochhead aligns herself with young people everywhere, for whom the desire to be solved by another seems totally acceptable, combined with a quiet acceptance that it is probably unrealistic. That Lochhead captures this familiar, yet often indescribable concept so succinctly is testament to her talent.

‘Obituary’ describes the initial stages of a love affair, the title an ironic comment on its subject matter. Lochhead documents the seemingly infallible nature of a relationship in its first throes of love, illustrating the various commonplace attributes which seem so special at the time, summarising each with ‘seems silly now really’. Closing her poem with ‘guilty of too much hope’ it is clear that her hopes for the relationship have been dashed and the title now makes perfect sense.

By setting much of her poetry in the familiar surroundings of Glasgow’s West End, and avoiding character descriptions of the men involved, Lochhead allows women in Glasgow in particular to experience that rare moment where readers can feel directly engaged or involved with a text. With this in mind I enthusiastically recommend ‘Memo for Spring’ and the more readily available ‘Dreaming Frankenstein’ to female readers in Glasgow and beyond.

What next?

Which sounds would we say help to sum up the Women’s Library? Which sounds deserve a place in the Women’s Library archives?

Let me start by saying: I am not going to open a discussion on archives in this blog. Firstly, because my knowledge of archives and archival theory is limited to what I have learned from Hannah; secondly, because such a discussion would require its own blog, perhaps its own website (sorry Helen!). But it is important to touch on why our archives exist – whose histories do they record and preserve? What treasures do they hold in their controlled-temperature-cool embrace?

Glasgow Women’s Library is rather pleased with our collection of feminist badges from the 70s and 80s; we tell anyone who’ll listen about our umbrella stand that was painted by incarcerated suffragettes; we are appropriately proud of our own beginnings and the necessary actions taken by our founding-mothers in their ongoing fight for women and equality.

What’s missing?

But there is a glaring absence – even in this appallingly patchy catalogue. I have not listed YOU amongst our prized possessions: your stories, your personal achievements, your contributions to Glasgow Women’s Library’s remarkable history. We would be nothing without you, and we believe that your stories are invaluable additions to our archives.

After spending time at the Library, Nicky understood that no sound archive could be complete without including recordings of GWL women. Tightening the links between the archives, our learners and library users, and their personal lives, Nicky decided to ask the Making Space group the following questions:

If you had to pick one object from your personal possessions to save, what would it be and why? It can be anything as long as it holds a story for you that you are willing to share.

If you had to pick one object from your personal possessions to donate to the GWL archives, what would it be and why? It can be anything as long as it holds a history that you feel is important.

Is there something you wish you had kept, but didn’t?

What did we learn?

I am sure you can imagine the rich and varied answers Nicky received, all of which were captured to be used in her work. It was wonderful listening to the women sharing family histories and personal memories; learning so much about each other in a few hours. What was particularly interesting was that however different our backgrounds and life experiences (and we really were a diverse bunch), the objects that we treasured had lots of similarities. Common to us all included: items that our grandmothers used or wore; photographs; crafts; many mementos of the work that women do and have always done. It is worth noting that almost all of us brought in objects relating to our female relatives, though this was not a requirement stated in Nicky’s questions.

So?

One of the happy results of these exercises is the feeling that we all have something worthwhile to share; we all have interesting or admirable relatives, whether they were spies, seamstresses, schoolteachers, stay-at-home-mums, or scandalous sexpots! Maybe your great-grand-aunt didn’t change the course of world history, but she made a difference to your life, and you have made a difference to us. In A Room of One’s Own, Virginia Woolf writes: “we think back through our mothers if we are women” – I hear this maxim echoing through the GWL archives, it is the background whisper in Nicky’s sound work.

Making Space group meeting