Feminist Archive (East Midlands)

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.

The archive and special collection:

The idea for the collection was instigated by Val Wood and Tina Pamplin. The Heritage Lottery funded Women’s Liberation and After in Nottingham (WoLAN) project, which was completed in 2015, had gathered oral histories concerning, primarily, the establishment of Nottingham’s Women’s Centreiv. Val and Tina wanted to build on this to collect the life stories of the women involved in other campaigns/actions in Nottingham and the wider East Midlands region. They were aware that time was running out to document the achievements and hard work of these women as some were succumbing to age-related ill health. They also wanted to find a permanent home for the papers, photographs, and memorabilia collected by the women involved. It was important to them that students, academics and researchers could access this material. They approached the University of Nottingham in 2018 knowing that Manuscripts and Special Collectionsv already held the papers of activists such as Fred Westacott and socialist and MEP, Ken Coates. Val had previously volunteered with Manuscripts helping to catalogue collections and research the significance of women in the University Archives.

Nottingham Feminist Archive Group:

In 2018, Margaret Davies, Barbara Hewitt and Lee Harrison, who had all been active in the Women’s Liberation Movement, joined Val and Tina in conducting oral history interviews and they successfully obtained funding from the National Lottery Heritage Fund in 2021 to have the interviews professionally transcribed (the Voices of Women Activists oral history project). Later Jayne Muir and Linda Shaw (a retired archivist) were recruited, and the women formed the Nottingham Feminist Archive Group.

Co-curation of the collections:

A project board had been established in June 2019 for the purposes of applying for a scoping grant from the National Archives, with representatives from the University and the Women’s Centre. The grant paid for a consultant, Katy Thornton, to assess the archive materials gathered by the Group and the feminist magazines from the 1970s and 1980s held by Nottingham’s Women’s Centre, which included rare survivals of newsletters and zines produced by local groups. Members of the Nottingham Feminist Archive Group set about building on the Women’s Centre’s extensive Women’s Library by helping to develop, preserve and facilitate access to these feminist magazines. They negotiated for the duplicate copies to be gifted to the University to form the basis of the new Feminist Publications Collection (FPC). The Group volunteered their time at the University from January 2022, working with Manuscripts staff to arrange the archive material, researching its context, and explaining its significance

Promotion of the collections:

The Nottingham Feminist Archive Group also advocated on behalf of the collections, holdings stalls at various events, including a local history event in Mansfield, Nottinghamshire, to promote the project and to gather further stories/material for the archive. They presented at the Nottingham Trent University conference 'Grassroots Activism om History and Memory' and at the University of Nottingham’s Volunteer Awards. They have signposted researchers to the collections here and at the Women’s Centre, Nottinghamshire Archives, Nottingham Black Archives and Sparrow’s Nest. As well as co-curating the collections, the Group have helped advise on the content for the 2024 Lakeside Arts exhibition ‘Dear sisters: anarchists’ archives’.

Manuscripts and Special Collections are indebted to the Feminist Archive Group for their efforts in creating and curating this collection, especially to Val Wood for research into the context and campaigns, Tina Pamplin for advocating and active collecting, Margaret Davies for managing the oral history interviews, Barbara Hewitt and Lee Harrison for conducting interviews and listing the collections, Jayne Muir for researching the history of the Group and listing the collections, and Linda Shaw for advising on the formation of the collection and the preservation of the materials at the Women's Centre.

Feminist publications have been transferred to the Feminist Publications Collection (FPC). Published material not wanted for FPC has been retained in the archive to provide information about the context in which the women worked/studied/lived.

The archive material has been arranged into the following series:

FME/1: Materials collected by the Nottingham Feminist Archive Group including donations of duplicate material from other organisations including Feminist Archive North and Nottingham’s Women’s Centre. This includes ephemera, research materials, papers from conferences and archive material with an unknown provenance; primarily 1970s-1990s.

FME/2: Photographs of women involved in activism including interviewees and donors of materials. Includes photographs from the period as well as photographs taken more recently; primarily 1970s-2020s.

FME/3: Archives of individual women; primarily 1970s-1990s. Catalogue records have also been created for women who haven’t donated material but for whom research materials have been collated.

FME/4: Recorded oral history interviews with women activists carried out by members of the Nottingham Feminist Archive Group, accompanied by interview transcriptions and summaries; 2019-2023.

FME/5: Ephemera relating to later campaigns/events.

Note that cataloguing is still in progress for some sections of the collection.

The bulk of the collection is accessible to all readers. However, access to some items is restricted under current Data Protection legislation. Please see our Access Policy or contact us for further advice.

This description is the only finding aid available for the collection. Copyright in the description belongs to The University of Nottingham.

Identification of copyright holders of unpublished material is often difficult.

Permission to make any published use of any material from the collection must be sought in writing on our Permission to Publish form (see the Reprographics Services part of our website or email mss-library@nottingham.ac.uk)

Reprographic copies can be supplied for educational and private study purposes only, depending on access status and the condition of the documents.

The bulk of the collection 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 interviews, transcripts and summaries were transferred in September 2023.

We continue to collect materials for the collection and welcome further donations/interviews. Our aspiration is for the collection to document a wide range of women’s activism from across the East Midlands, in keeping with the East Midlands focus of Manuscripts and Special Collections’ Acquisition Policy.

Women's Library, Nottingham Women's Centre

Archive of Nottingham's Women's Centre at Nottinghamshire Archives (DD/NWC)

Feminist Publications Collection (FPC)

Record Office for Leicestershire, Leicester and Rutland: Leicester Women’s Aid and associated groups records (DE9867 and DE9961) and Leicester Women’s Liberation Movement Newsletter (LP-12-L)

Blue Mountain Womens Group at Nottinghamshire Archives (DD/BMWG)

CD of recordings and transcription of interviews for dissertation 'Nottinghamshire Women in the Miners' Strike 1984-85' conducted by Victoria Shepherd, 2013 (MS 1035)