Hi, I’m Kriss, one of the members of Wigtown Women’s Walk Group. It doesn’t seem like only 15 months since the group was set up. That was back in April 2009, after an event I organised for International Women’s Day and invited Glasgow Women’s Library to do a presentation on their women’s heritage walks in Glasgow. The idea of a heritage walk in Wigtown first occurred to me a year or so previously, but everything came together in 2009 and our group was born.
Since then we have become formally constituted and been successful in obtaining grant funding from the Scottish Community Fund (SCF) to help with leaflet planning, design and printing. We also obtained funding from Paths for All for our launch which took place on International Women’s Day 2010 at the site of the only women’s tea party ever held in the Commercial Inn to celebrate Queen Victoria’s wedding. The Scottish Community Fund contributed funding to the invitations which were in Victorian script and used designs of the day. The participants at the original tea party were 30 spinsters of the parish (for that read virgins) “who had survived the frosts of 40 winters”. With forty-year-old virgins being a bit thin on the ground we opted for our guests to be women involved with the community who could spread the word amongst their organisations. We were not disappointed. We were also fortunate to have had the help of Gina Young from Stranraer Museum who mounted an appropriate display in the County Buildings to coincide with our launch. As well as obtaining grant funding we have been very active fundraising ourselves with quizzes which we have sold at our events. These quizzes have stretched us in lots of ways and been very well received.
Following on from the launch we took the walk to the Spring Book Festival in Wigtown in May and to the Wigtown Community Festival in July, along with a workshop provided by Glasgow Women’s Library. We also have a presence at this year’s Wigtown Book Festival in September where we are hosting a fringe event with a guided walk, drop in activities about the history of heritage trails from Glasgow Women’s Library, a photographic exhibition depicting local women from yesteryear, and at the moment we are tying up the loose ends of a commemorative anthology of poems, prose and script inspired by our Trail. These have been written by local women writers and illustrated by a local woman artist and a female photographer. This commemorative anthology will be on sale for £3.00 during our fringe event. A larger anthology will include all contributions from writers and be on sale next March, to coincide with another launch.
Next on the agenda is an ambitious audio project to enable those with visual impairments and learning difficulties to access the walk. Funding is currently being sought to enable us to create a podcast which can be downloaded onto CD, DVD, or MP3 players. Schools and community groups can also access the walk this way and it is proposed to have MP3 players on loan from the library, which have all the relevant information about the walk and people/places in the area. We are hoping to launch this at next year’s International Women’s Day and on the Glasgow Women’s Library website.
So you see, it’s all happening here at Wigtown. Why not come and see our efforts for yourself!
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