Tomorrow, 12th August, begins National Heritage Week – undoubtedly one of the busiest weeks of the year for heritage professionals! This year has lots of variety for us – we’re privileged to be sharing updates on collections, exhibition, and interpretation projects with some wonderful museums, showcasing a community heritage project to preserve a historic graveyard, curating the unique Leitrim Women’s Pop-up Museum, and providing children’s heritage craft workshops in Galway and Laois. Hoping to also make it to some of the brilliant events going on in our region – Heritage Week is a such a valuable initiative, and it is always a pity that it passes so quickly!
Phase 2 of our “Leitrim Women Through Time” project, a collaboration with the North Leitrim Women’s Centre, recently kicked off with a special event exploring the important connection of the former Western Button Factory in Leitrim to the history of women in the county – many of whom first had the opportunity to work outside the home in that industry. The factory was a large source of employment for women in the region, and they filled many of its roles.
Women not working directly in the factory also carried out ‘piece work’ for it at home to earn extra money – by stitching the produced buttons onto display cards for shop sale. Our event featured a talk on the history of the factory by local historian Maureen Keaney, and was followed by many discussions and a craft workshop led by artist Mary Foley and featuring the use of original vintage buttons made in the Western Button Factory. It was wonderful to meet a number of the former factory workers, who shared their memories and experiences, and to view a large number of the original buttons made in the factory over its lifetime (1937 – 1972). People from the area raided their cupboards and button tins to bring out their small pieces of history for display and comparison!
Our unique button craft workshop was inspired by the stitching patterns used by the women who took on the ‘piece work’ of stitching the buttons to card in their homes, and our participants put their own mark on the button stitching traditions used by these women. We hope to combine the pieces created on the night to make a future commemorative artistic piece to remember all of the women who worked in the factory over its lifetime.
We were delighted with the success of the night, and our thanks are due to all who participated and who made it so special – we’re looking forward to another Leitrim women’s history event coming up next month! Phase 2 of the “Leitrim Women Through Time” project is supported by The Heritage Council Community Heritage Grant Scheme 2023.
Thanks to the support of Creative Ireland, we are working with the North Leitrim Women’s Centre to create Leitrim’s first Pop-up Women’s Museum in four public locations across the county in May and June! We have been working with the brilliant Women’s Centre since 2022, when we first established our community heritage project, Leitrim Women Through Time. Leitrim Women Through Time (LWTT) is a collaborative local history initiative run by the North Leitrim Women’s Centre and Scéal Heritage Consultancy, which celebrates and records the stories of everyday rural women neglected by history.
The Pop-up Leitrim Women’s Museum includes the display of the “Leitrim Women Through Time 1850 – 1950” travelling museum exhibition, created for the first phase of the project from recorded community stories. This is accompanied by a display of objects from rural women’s history, with examples of items from women’s work inside and outside the home, women’s craft, and women’s personal lives; all which tell stories of women’s lives in the near and distant past. These include a wide variety of objects from rural women’s lives including a spinning wheel, an antique Singer sewing machine, a butter churn, a washboard, Clones lace, Irish linen and knitting, and vintage household books and women’s magazines.
We are encouraging people to bring along their own photographs, documents, and objects linked to local women’s history to these events to be recorded by our overall project, and we will scan, copy, and photograph all shared information and objects to add to the project archive for preservation for the future. We also want this project to give people the opportunity to temporarily display their own objects linked to rural women in the Museum, and we currently have a public callout for local contributions for exhibition. The first date of this exciting new initiative took place on Wednesday 24th May in Leitrim County Library, and the Pop-up Museum will be in three more locations across the county over the next month!
It may not seem like it now, but summer isn’t that far away!! We’re now taking bookings from organisations and venues for children’s heritage craft workshops for summer events including Heritage Week and Libraries Ireland’s Summer Stars programme. Workshop choices include bookmaking, or making prehistoric pottery or Bronze Age jewellery! Contact us at scealheritage@gmail.com to find out more information.
We recently finished up our lectures on the Local History Certificate run by the University of Limerick and The Irish Workhouse Centre Portumna – delighted to provide lectures on Archaeology in the Landscape and Museums and Material Culture to such a great course! One of the Certificate students brought along a fascinating family heirloom for the last lecture – an original collection of GAA ‘Gaelic Sportstars’ collectable player cards, given away with sweet cigarettes in possibly the early ’60s! Some lovely pieces of sporting ephemera, and a collectable tradition that still continues strong today with football player trading cards. Really great to see some camogie players represented in the collection too!
We’re delighted to have played a part in the production of “Bonnets, Bandoliers & Ballot Papers” – an important new National Museum of Ireland digital history resource about the women’s stories told by the surviving material culture of the national collections. Scéal Heritage Consultancy provided professional research services for the compilation of the resource, and on-camera contributions discussing women’s history and the use of print media during the period of the fight for women’s right to a national vote.
The resource’s virtual tour explores key artefacts from the Museum’s collection which tell the story of women’s lives and experiences at the beginning of the 20th Century. The resource is designed for Post-Primary students of History, Politics and Society and CSPE, but can also be enjoyed by all ages. The virtual tour can be viewed on the Museum’s website (www.museum.ie), or on Youtube at: https://youtu.be/GXGjZV2S_X8 .
We were lucky to work on some wonderful projects in 2022 – thanks again to all of our customers and collaborators! There are a number of current and upcoming opportunities for museums, heritage organisations, and community groups to apply for funding for new projects in 2023. Scéal Heritage Consultancy would be delighted to work with your organisation to discuss potential projects and grant applications of all sizes – please feel free to get in touch at scealheritage@gmail.com!
Scéal Heritage Consultancy and the North Leitrim Women’s Centre are delighted to announce the launch of “Leitrim Women Through Time: 1850 – 1950”, a new travelling museum exhibition telling stories of everyday Leitrim women from the past. The exhibition will be officially launched on Friday 4th November at 7.30pm in the Glens Centre, Manorhamilton, Co. Leitrim. All are welcome to attend on the night, and refreshments will be served.
This exhibition was formed as a result of the first phase of our new venture “Leitrim Women Through Time”, a collaborative heritage project supported by the Heritage Council’s 2022 Community Heritage Grant scheme. This new community-based project sets out to explore and share people’s knowledge and memories of the everyday lives of women in the county over hundreds of years. The project focuses on the lives of the ordinary Leitrim woman; celebrating the majority, rather than the minority, and those previously neglected in discussion. It concentrates on the experiences of the everyday woman – highlighting the value of remembering and recording what domestic, working, and personal life was like for local women.
For the exhibition, we worked with community participants across the region to gather information and suggestions for themes which would best tell the story of Leitrim women in the period of 1850 to 1950. The exhibition will be displayed in venues across the county, and we would like to connect with any groups or organisations who would be interested in displaying the free travelling exhibition in their venue.
“Leitrim Women Through Time” will be a multi-phase project that will work to gather and preserve an archive of Leitrim women’s history for the future. Everyone is welcome to contribute memories, writings, photographs, and any other information – you can get in contact with the project via the details below. https://www.facebook.com/leitrimwomenthroughtime scealheritage@gmail.com / info@northleitrimwomenscentre.ie / 071 985 6220
We’re running a number of free and inclusive children’s workshops in the month of August in Galway, Laois, Sligo, and Roscommon!
We’re part of the Summer Stars programme for Galway Public Libraries, with free children’s workshops in prehistoric pottery making at 11.30am & 1.30pm in Moylough Library on Thursday 4th August, and at 10.30am & 12.30pm in Dunmore Library on Friday 5th August. Please contact the libraries to book your place, as places are limited. These workshops are kindly supported through the Heritage in Schools programme under The Heritage Council.
For Heritage Week, we’ll be in Laois Libraries for free prehistoric pottery workshops on Wednesday 17th August – at 10am in Mountrath Library, at 12.15 in Abbeyleix Library, and at 3pm in Durrow Library. Please contact the libraries to book your place, as places are limited.
Last week, we had a lovely few days spent talking about objects from the past and filming memories with some wonderful members of the Third Age organisation in Summerhill, Meath. We are working on a new digital video addition to their existing “The Way We Were” project, which focuses on object learning and reminiscence.
Working with Emma Hayward Video, the new videos showcase some of the Third Age members as they tell the stories of objects from their past which form part of the Centre’s mini museum collection. Prior to the outbreak of Covid in 2020, Third Age members were regular visitors to schools in the region, where they would introduce children to now obsolete objects which were not familiar to the younger generation, and teach them of their significance. With return visits to schools not yet a safe option for older visitors, this project will record these important stories for a virtual school audience ,and allow this valuable community outreach work to continue online.
As well as filming, we delivered training in the best methods and techniques used for object learning with children, which helped the members to tell their stories clearly and provided them with confidence to deliver them in an engaging manner to a young audience. Our project is kindly supported by The Heritage Council Community Heritage Grant scheme, and the videos will be available for circulation to schools in September this year.
Scéal Heritage Consultancy 