Introducing the Feminist Collections
The Feminist Archive (East Midlands) was conceived by the Nottingham Feminist Archive Group, a collective of local women, some of whom were active in the Women’s Liberation Movement in Nottingham.
In 2018 they embarked on a project to interview the women they were still in contact with, succesfully obtaining funding from the National Lottery Heritage Fund (the Voices of Nottingham Women Activists), and along the way began to gather archive materials and feminist magazines. They were passionate about ensuring students could access the history of women’s activism in Nottingham, so they approached Manuscripts and Special Collections to ask if we could provide a home for the materials they had collected. They also set to work developing and preserving the feminist magazines at the Women’s Centre Library. In the process, they identified many duplicates which were kindly donated to our new Feminist Publications Collection (FPC).
Scope of the collections
The material reflects the emergence of the Women’s Liberation Movement from the 1970s onwards, covering all issues raised by and responded to by second wave feminism in this locality. The collections are unique to Nottingham which had a significant WLM membership. They show where ideas began and how feminist politics were put into practice. There is evidence of the role local women played in establishing a women’s centre for the city (one of the oldest in the country), material demonstrating the pro-active stance women in the region took in respect of peace campaigns, and the role undertaken to support miners and their wives in the 1984-1985 strike. The archive also demonstrates the strategic operational role that the Nottingham Women’s Liberation Group held in the Movement’s national conferences, the National Abortion Campaign and the Childcare Campaign, and evidences involvement in the Labour and Trade Union movement, for example in relation to the campaign for Equal Opportunities and the Women’s Working Charter.
The collection covers a variety of topics including family, health, employment, social policy issues, women’s aid, militarism and peace, the politics of the Women’s Liberation movement, lesbianism and the arts.
Browse
Descriptions of the contents of the collections can be browsed as follows:
Collecting
The bulk of the material in the collections was accumulated over a number of years by individuals and organisations as women activists from the 1960s and 1970s have downsized and/or cleared properties. Many of the donations were prompted by the process of being interviewed for the project. This material was transferred to Manuscripts and Special Collections in 2021. Further donations have since been made, some directly and some via members of the Group. The duplicate magazines from the Women’s Centre were donated in December 2022. The first tranche of interviews, transcripts and summaries were transferred in September 2023 with further additions on a regular basis.
We continue to collect materials and welcome further donations/interviews.
Our aspiration is for the collection to document a wide range of women’s activism from the 1970s onwards from across the East Midlands, in keeping with the East Midlands focus of Manuscripts and Special Collections’ Acquisition Policy.
Explore
You can find out more about the East Midlands Feminist Archive and Feminist Publications Collection via the following:
News
The Nottingham Feminist Archive Group is embarking on a new project to research the history of Nottingham’s Lesbian Centre, the Black Lesbian Group, and Lesbian activism in the East Midlands in the 1970s-1990s. If you have any relevant photos, flyers, posters, papers, or memories you would like to share, we would love to hear from you.
Upcoming events
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26th April 6-10pm at the New Art Exchange ‘Love letters to Lesbians’, with badge making, a writing workshop, open mic and live band/performances. The Women’s Centre/Nottingham Feminist Archive Group will have a stall there. The event is in conjunction with NAE’s latest exhibition ‘The Lovers’ by Sunil Gupta and Charan Singh.
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19th June 7:00-8:30 pm at Nottingham Central Library ‘Thank You For Calling the Lesbian Line!’. We will have a presence at this event with author Elizabeth Lovatt. It's organised by Five Leaves with CJ DeBarra and the Notts Queer History Archive, an LGBT+ history book and archive documenting and preserving the community memories from 1850-2022.
Recent events
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We launched our research into the history of the Lesbian Centre and Black Lesbian Group in Nottingham, with our display on the 14th February of items from the collections which relate to lesbian activism, as well as materials relating to 1975 (International Women’s Year) for the 50th anniversary. It was a great opportunity to read through some of the materials. We found an article about the launch of the Closet Library at the newly opened Lesbian Centre and had a good read through the pages of the minute book for the Nottingham Women’s Liberation Group’s meetings for 1975, which included a discussion about the Group’s newsletters.
- The Nottingham Feminist Archive Group had a stall at both the Women’s Centre and Nottingham Central Library for their International Women’s Day events, with a display celebrating the 50th anniversary of International Women’s Year (see photo below).
- The University Women’s Network and Parenting Forum on 19th March in the Reading Room at King’s Meadow Campus held an event featuring a display (see photos) on women’s health, childbirth, parenting and the Working Women’s Charter. Pippa and Angie who had donated papers and publications to the Feminist Collections were on hand to show visitors items from the Archive and to talk about their activism. The member of staff at the University who more recently set up a Parenting Forum talked about her own activism, fighting for better access to home births. It was fascinating to hear different generations sharing their experiences and comparing the support that was/is offered to women. See photos below.
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