Women & Theatre take WWI heritage project Women’s Work on Tour.
Award winning Women & Theatre have been working with members of Birmingham’s Small Heath community as part of their heritage project, Women’s Work, exploring the experiences of women working in factories during the First World War; the project culminates in an exhibition which will travel between libraries across Birmingham from April–July 2015.
The exhibition will feature costumes and props from the theatre performance, Clocking On, which was devised by local women through archive and interview based research and performed in Small Heath in March 2015. The exhibition will also include background information on the characters, poems and photographs used in research activities, a WWI timeline and photos from the production.
The exhibition will visit Small Heath Library, Northfield Library, Birchfield Library and the Balsall Heath Library. At each library the exhibition will be launched with a 30 minute event where participants and a member of the artistic team will talk about the project, the creation of the performance piece and perform a short extract from Clocking On.
Rachel Snape, Project Manager, Women & Theatre said: “The stories we are uncovering as part of our WWI series are those that are under-represented or unheard. By bringing these to the attention of our audiences we allow them to become alive again. All our work is research based and our Women’s Work participants examined archives held in the Library of Birmingham and interviewed descendants of those women who worked in factories during the Great War to create a unique performance.
“We hope the touring exhibition of the project will allow more members of the public to link with the research we have gathered.”
Exhibition dates and venues:
Small Heath Library
13th April–1st May (Launch Monday 13th April 2pm)
Muntz Street, Birmingham, B10 9RX.
Northfield Library
5th May–22nd May (Launch Tuesday 5th May 11am)
77 Church Road, Birmingham, B31 2LB
Birchfield Library
26th May-12th June (Launch 26th May 11am)
2 Trinity Road, Birmingham, B6 6AH
Balsall Heath Library
15th June–3rd July (Launch Monday 15th June 2pm)
Moseley Road, Birmingham, B12 9BX
Women’s Work is a sister project to successful The Chocolate Soldiers which Women & Theatre created in 2013-14 with funding from HLF. This involved young men carrying out research into the lives and experiences of men like them who lived 100 years ago and were recruited to fight in the First World War.
Women’s Work is funded by Heritage Lottery Fund as well as by Birmingham City Council, The Roughley Trust, The Grimmitt Trust and The Cole Charitable Trust.
For further details of the whole project, the performances or the touring exhibition visit the project blog www.womenandtheatre.tumblr.com