Glasgow Women’s Library (GWL) celebrated its 30th anniversary in September 2021. As we now enter our fourth decade, we are thrilled to be recipients of a grant from the National Lottery Heritage Fund for a two year project to interpret, safeguard and share our own 30-year heritage, and enable us to ‘look back to move forward’.
Since 1991 GWL has grown from an unfunded, grassroots group into a renowned heritage resource: delivering thousands of events, supporting thousands of volunteers, and in a sequence of spaces that have impacted on many hundreds of thousands of people locally, nationally and internationally.
Glasgow Women’s Library is a unique organisation that aims to increase the knowledge and understanding of women’s history, lives, and achievements in all their complexity and diversity. As the UK’s sole Accredited Museum dedicated to women’s history, and a Recognised Collection of National Significance, we also house an extensive lending Library and deliver innovative programmes of public events and learning opportunities.
As GWL’s origins and earlier work become increasingly historic, and public interest in them as a model grows, this project – 30 Years of Changing Minds – will ensure that our institutional knowledge and own heritage is not at risk of being lost and is made available for wider public benefit. It will involve many people, including past and current volunteers, while bringing GWL to new audiences. Raising awareness of key change-making milestones in our history, it will inspire the work of both established and emerging heritage and cultural projects, and will help GWL to respond to the increasing ‘ask’ of our organisational ‘elders’ to share knowledge about who we are and how we function.
30 Years of Changing Minds will publicly mark 30 years of a ground-breaking organisation that has informed and responded to equalities agendas. It will illustrate the core values at the heart of GWL, and encourage wider ownership, awareness and participation.
“The story of Glasgow Women’s Library is an inspiring one that we want to share with others. We are proud that from the grass roots we have given rise to a unique, values-led institution that has grown into an influential model for the museums, library and archive sector. Glasgow Women’s Library has prioritised conserving, promoting and showcasing the hidden histories of others but this grant will ensure its own heritage is safeguarded and made accessible. Our heritage speaks to many of the key challenges, not just of the past 30 years, but of today and the future, whether about whose culture is represented or how people can make cultural organisations their own. Taking time to reflect is often a luxury many organisations feel they cannot afford but this funding will enable us to do just that.”
Dr Adele Patrick, Co-founder and Director of Creative Development, Delivery and Engagement, Glasgow Women’s Library.
Help us to conserve and celebrate GWL’s hidden history
We need your help to make sure that our history is remembered, documented, and shared into the future. From Garnethill to Trongate, Parnie Street to Berkeley Street and finally to our permanent home in Bridgeton – we’re currently gathering your memories of GWL events and activities. What filled you with excitement, sparked joy and laughter, touched your heart, or made you feel at home? Do you have images, objects, or items to share with our Collections Team? We’d love to hear from you. Get in touch with our Project Coordinator, Rachel Thain-Gray at rachel.thain-gray@womenslibrary.org.uk for an informal chat.
Upcoming Events
This season our 30th Anniversary project 30 Years of Changing Minds picks up momentum. Our dedicated project team have set to work unpacking GWL’s history from both archive boxes, and from the memories of past and present staff, volunteers, Board, participants, and partners.
Our anniversary activities focus on revealing GWL’s origin story. And like any great origin story, we explore how our reality came into existence! What were the conditions that ignited GWL’s grassroots beginnings? Memories of an early recce to feminist cultural organisations in Hamburg, Berlin and Frankfurt have already come to the surface! Who was there? What did they do? How did they do it? What were their motivations? What was their experience of instigating GWL? These questions will be answered as we activate memory and reflection with GWL’s founders and early instigators in our ‘Working Memory Space’.
