Women, Activism, Archive and Heritage, Govanhill International Festival

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Women, Activism, Archive and Heritage, Govanhill International Festival

Sunday 6 August, 2023, 2:00 – 8:00pm

The Deep End, 21 Nithsdale St, Glasgow G41 2PZ

Free but ticketed Book Tickets

Talks:

Bread and Roses v Bread and Circuses: The story of the treatment of Glasgow’s Culture, Elspeth King

This session will offer a brief historical survey of Glasgow’s material culture looking at when Glasgow, capital of culture 1990 adopted the culture of capitalism. Why did Glasgow choose cultural destruction through the comprehensive redevelopment areas of 1955-1985 and why was so much lost? Is it acceptable to think of the culture purchased by William Burrell as being in any way an adequate replacement for what has been destroyed and forgotten?

Expect to see a lot of social history objects, most of which have never seen the light of day since they were consigned to storage and in some cases, to dispersal after 1990.

Sell and be damned – Stories and struggle, Anni Donaldson

Sell and be damned – the great Merrylee Housing Scandal of 1951 by Ned Donaldson and Les Forster, first published in 1992 and republished in 2022, tells the story of one of Glasgow’s most successful post-war direct action housing campaigns. This important little book has other stories to tell however. Weaving together memory and history, the personal and the political, this session by Anni Donaldson will revisit some of the Merrylee story’s sites of struggle over the last 70 years. Dr Anni Donaldson is a writer, feminist scholar, oral historian. Ned Donaldson was her Dad.

Plus! Radical Reel “Sitting Tight”

Screening plus Q & A with researcher Rhia Laing

A documentary made in 2022 to celebrate the story of the Lee Jeans Factory Sit-in. In Greenock, 1981, amid fears the Lee Jeans factory was to close, staff barricaded themselves inside whilst negotiations regarding their jobs took place. The sit-in lasted 7 months, during which time local Greenockians, as well as the wider labour and trade union communities, banded together to support the workers and their families. The documentary tells the story of the women involved, whilst also including multifaceted material created by the local community.