rural women's history – Scéal Heritage Consultancy

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!

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

Tag: rural women's history

Leitrim’s First Pop-Up Women’s Museum!

“Leitrim Women Through Time” – A New Rural Women’s History Project