Modernist heroines — a collaborative callout, women we need you!

The Shrieking Violet is delighted to be teaming up with Manchester Modernist Society and the Loiterers Resistance Movement to invite you to join us in a collaborative project promoting a century of Modernist women to coincide with the hundredth birthday celebrations of International Women's Day on March 8.

We are currently looking for expressions of interest around the theme of ten fabulous females strongly associated with the North West spanning the fields of invention, aviation, media, science, design and architecture in the twentieth century.

We aim to produce a publication and range of activities centred around the lives and careers of our ten local heroines in early March, and are looking for your creative responses. This can be (but is not limited to) an event, performance, piece of creative writing, interview or journalism. Our only stipulation is that the work be about one of our ten local heroines.

The Manchester Modernist Society exists to raise awareness and appreciation of Modern architecture & the urban environment and related modern art and design, in Manchester and the surrounding region, through walks, talks and creative collaborations.

The ten modernist heroines are:

1. Mitzi Solomon Cunliffe (January 1 1918 – December 30 2006) was an American sculptor who was a long resident in Didsbury. She was most famous for designing the golden trophy in the shape of a theatrical mask that would go on to represent the British Academy of Film and Television Arts and be presented as the BAFTA award. She also designed the mural on the Heaton Park Pumping Station.

2. Winifred Brown, Salfordian Flyer and, in her early 20s, winner of the Kings Cup (air race) in 1930.

3. Rachel Haugh co-established the architectural practice Ian Simpson Associates. She was born and brought up in Manchester and studied at Bath University School of Architecture. She is a founding partner and co-director of Ian Simpson Architects, a design-led architectural practice which was established in 1987 and employs around 50 people in offices in Manchester and London.

4. Susan Sutherland Isaacs (1885–1948) was a Bolton born educational psychologist and psychoanalyst. Educated at Manchester and Cambridge Universities, she published pioneer studies on the intellectual and social development of children and promoted the nursery school movement. For Isaacs developing a child’s independence, which is best achieved through play, was the best way for children to learn and the role of adults and early educators was to guide children's play. She was awarded a CBE in 1948.

5. Marie Stopes (15 October 1880 – 2 October 1958) was a noted palaeobotanist, campaigner for women's rights and pioneer in the field of family planning. She was the first woman member of faculty at Manchester University.

6. Professor Rosalie David is the world's leading expert on Egyptian mummies. She is Director of the Centre for Biomedical and Forensic Egyptology at the University of Manchester and has directed the Manchester Egyptian Mummy Research Project since 1973. This project has pioneered the 'Manchester Method' — the use of medical and scientific techniques to investigate ancient Egyptian mummies to detect evidence of disease and information about everyday life in ancient Egypt. She was the first woman professor in Egyptology in Britain, and the first to receive an OBE in recognition of her services in Egyptology.

7. Olive Shapley, (10 April 1910– 13 March 1999) was a British radio producer and broadcaster. In 1934 she began her career with the BBC as Children's Hour organiser with the responsibility of producing five hour-long programmes every week. These included at least two full-length live plays a week. After the war she became the third presenter of ‘Woman's Hour’, a programme with which she was associated for over twenty years, producing the programme between 1949 and 1953. Meanwhile, she began to develop a career as a presenter in the new television medium. In the mid-1960s her Manchester home became a refuge (as a charitable trust) for single mothers and later, in the late 1970s, for Vietnamese boat people.

8. Professor Doreen Massey is a Manchester born contemporary British social scientist and geographer. She has devoted her life to the subject, speaking passionately about the significance of geography and the 'politics of place' in a globalised world. Her work has had a profound influence on theorising around space and place and has taken the study of geography into new inter-disciplinary directions.

9. Mary Stott (18 July 1907 – 16 September 2002) was a British feminist and journalist, the first — and longest-serving — editor of the Guardian women's page. One of the great campaigning journalists of the 20th century, in her 15-year tenure from 1957 to 1972 she invented a platform for women's voices and concerns and used it to further such causes.

10. Linder Sterling studied graphic design at the Manchester School of Art from 1974-77 and played a vital part in the 1970s punk scene in Manchester, designing graphics for the Buzzcocks, Magazine and Factory Records. She remains a pivotal visual artist, performance artist and musician, whose work has been selected for the Tate Triennial.

Deadline for expression of interest is Friday 28 January — simply indicate your chosen Heroine and an outline of the type of work likely to be submitted.

Deadlines for final submission of work is Friday 18 February, to allow print and publicity in time for our March event on Sunday 6 March.

Please email info@manchestermodernistsociety.org in the first instance with your choice of Fabulous Female and a short summary of the idea you might wish to pursue.

Please pass the details onto anyone you think might be interested.