Modernist Heroines article in Gender, Place & Culture by Morag Rose

Congratulations to Dr Morag Rose on the publication of her journal article in Gender, Place & Culture, ‘From an aviatrix to a eugenicist: walking with Manchester’s Modernist Heroines’, which documents Manchester’s Modernist Heroines, a joint local history project between the joint Loiterers Resistance Movement, Manchester Modernist Society and the Shrieking Violet in 2011. The article focuses on the alternative walking tour Morag developed, inspired by the ten twentieth-century women we highlighted through the project, and explores walking as feminist pedagogy; it's been great to see the project revisited, contextualised and reevaluated from a new perspective.

Read Morag's article online here.

Read the Manchester’s Modernist Heroines publication here, and find out more about the project and the heroines, here.

Guest lecture, Bradford School of Art, Wednesday 31 October - Woman's Outlook: A Surprisingly Modern Magazine?

I'll be returning to Bradford School of Art on Wednesday 31 October to do another lecture in its Random Lecture series. The lectures take place at 12 noon in the Dye House Gallery; all welcome.

I'll be talking about my research into the twentieth-century co-operative women's magazine Woman's Outlook, published by the Co-operative Press from Manchester between 1919 and 1967, which combined political campaigning and information with domestic tips and knowledge.

'Woman's Outlook' book chapter in 'Women's Periodicals and Print Culture in Britain, 1918-1939: The Interwar Period'

I'm really delighted to have a chapter about the twentieth century co-operative women's magazine Woman's Outlook in the new collection Women's Periodicals and Print Culture in Britain, 1918-1939: The Interwar Period, published by Edinburgh University Press (I'm also really pleased that the book features an image of Woman's Outlook on its cover!).

This blog is one of the places where I have explored my interest in Woman's Outlook, a magazine for the campaigning women of the co-operative movement, which was published by the Co-operative Press in Manchester between 1919 and 1967 and combined information about political and social issues with domestic tips and advice. The chapter is based on research into the magazine in the National Co-operative Archive in Manchester, which holds a complete set of the publication.

To find out more about the book and other contributors, visit https://edinburghuniversitypress.com/book-women-039-s-periodicals-and-print-culture-in-britain-1918-1939.html.

Review: What If Women Ruled the World?, Manchester International Festival

Premiering in the week that North Korea claimed a successful intercontinental missile test, and the columnist Owen Jones sparked a social media row by suggesting the British people should present large-scale public resistance if the President of the United States visited the UK, What If Women Ruled the World? feels scarily prescient and necessary for an art performance.

Rather than a hackneyed invitation to smash the patriarchy – although the need to replace established hierarchies is, unsurprisingly, a recurrent theme – What If Women Ruled the World? uses a creative platform to imagine a situation in which humanity is forced to start anew, and to learn the lessons of the past (and the present).

Israeli artist Yael Bartana’s commission for Manchester International Festival takes the ambiguous end point of Stanley Kubrick’s classic film Dr Strangelove as its starting point, positing a female-led world in which women outnumber men ten to one and asking what would happen next if the slate was wiped clean and we could start again – with women in charge.

To start with, the piece has an air of amateur dramatics about it – think stick-on-moustaches, exaggerated accents, women in drag and ‘survival kits’ containing lipstick and nylons alongside sustenance and weapons – but the piece convincingly navigates between fact and storytelling, entertainment and debate, information and polemic. It’s both historically grounded and contemporary, incorporating possibly the first literary reference to ‘covfefe’, to knowing audience laughter.

What If Women Ruled the World? comes into its own when the five actors in the war room are brought together with five women who are real-life international experts in their fields, ranging from economics and development to archaeology and feminism. The women discuss major and recognisable challenges facing the world outside – from climate change, the threat of nuclear war, pandemics and the depletion of natural resources to ongoing conflict and systemised violence against women. Behind them the Doomsday Clock ticks away, offering archival glimpses into natural and manmade disasters, with both personal and global impacts, as a rapidly deteriorating post-bomb landscape is alluded to, building a very real sense of urgency.

What If Women Ruled the World? is an invitation to imagine things done differently, and to ask questions of our actions and priorities as individuals, as city dwellers, and as British, European and global citizens. It starts with a lighthearted premise, exploring serious issues with personality and humour, but it’s a simplistic title for a piece that suggests not just overthrowing the patriarchy, but our entire economic, social and political systems and fundamentally rethinking the way we relate to each other and to the planet. At a time when socialist ideas such as equitable taxation and economic redistribution are apparently back in vogue, much of the discussion captures the zeitgeist, but ultimately, it serves as a warning about bigger dangers such as the power of individuals and the cult of personality. It poses not just the titular question, but asks who should be allowed a seat at the table of power, whose knowledge and expertise we take on board, and what measures we need to take to ensure those voices are heard.

What If Women Ruled the World? is at Mayfield, Manchester, until Saturday 8 July as part of Manchester International Festival. To book visit http://mif.co.uk/mif17-events/what-if-women-ruled-the-world.

The Shrieking Violet talk at Sounds from the Other city/Zinester film

The Shrieking Violet is excited to be appearing at Sounds from the Other City festival in Salford on Sunday May 1.

As part of Salford Zine Library’s takeover of the Deli Lama Café, several zinesters and poets have been invited to do short readings and talks about their work, with zines from the library also available to explore and browse. The Shrieking Violet will be appearing alongside other favourites such as Poor Lass, talking at 6.30pm. For more information and times, keep an eye on www.soundsfromtheothercity.com/artist-a-z and www.salfordzinelibrary.co.uk/news/sounds-from-the-other-city-2016.

Poor Lass, Salford Zine Library and the Shrieking Violet were recently featured in Zinester, a short film about feminist zinemaking in Manchester by Emily Steele. View the film online:


Zinester from Emily Steele on Vimeo.

Woman's Outlook talk, Cafe Kino, Bristol, Tuesday June 17, free

I've been invited by the lovely Roxy Brennan (Shrieking Violet issue 21 contributor and Two White Cranes singer), who programmes events at Cafe Kino in Bristol, to do my talk about the co-operative women's magazine Woman's Outlook at Cafe Kino on Tuesday June 17, 7pm, free.

Facebook event.



Woman's Outlook – a surprisingly modern magazine? 

For nearly five decades, Woman’s Outlook was the voice of the Co-operative Women’s Guild, the campaigning organisation which worked to raise the status of women both in the co-operative movement and in society, and its onetime editor Mary Stott later became a longstanding editor of the Guardian women’s pages. From its origins in Manchester in 1919, Outlook provided an enticing mixture of articles addressing both the personal and the political, combining fashion, fiction, features and recipes with advice for working women – in many ways, not dissimilar to the content of women’s magazines today!

‘Woman’s Outlook: a surprisingly modern magazine?’ will explore some of the key issues addressed in Outlook, and look at how the magazine encouraged women to get involved in campaigning for a better world. Topics covered by Outlook such as female representation in parliament, equal pay and healthy eating remain highly relevant today, and the talk will end by considering whether the type of content provided by 21st century women’s lifestyle magazines has really changed much since the days of Outlook.

Research for the talk was undertaken in the National Co-operative Archive in Manchester, and I also conducted interviews with some inspiring women who were members of the co-operative women's movement at the time.

Please pass this on to anyone you think might be interested.

Manchester Histories Festival talk: Woman's Outlook – a surprisingly modern magazine?

I've been invited to repeat my talk about the co-operative women's magazine Woman's Outlook, which was published from Manchester between 1919 and 1967, at the People's History Museum on Saturday March 29 at 1pm. The talk takes place during this year's Manchester Histories Festival and Wonder Women series of events about Manchester's radical history and accompanies the free exhibition The People's Business - 150 Years of the Co-operative.

The talk is free but should be booked here. Facebook event.

Woman's Outlook – a surprisingly modern magazine? 

For nearly five decades, Woman’s Outlook was the voice of the Co-operative Women’s Guild, the campaigning organisation which worked to raise the status of women both in the co-operative movement and in society, and its onetime editor Mary Stott later became a longstanding editor of the Guardian women’s pages. From its origins in Manchester in 1919, Outlook provided an enticing mixture of articles addressing both the personal and the political, combining fashion, fiction, features and recipes with advice for working women – in many ways, not dissimilar to the content of women’s magazines today!

‘Woman’s Outlook: a surprisingly modern magazine?’ will explore some of the key issues addressed in Outlook, and look at how the magazine encouraged women to get involved in campaigning for a better world. Topics covered by Outlook such as female representation in parliament, equal pay and healthy eating remain highly relevant today, and the talk will end by considering whether the type of content provided by 21st century women’s lifestyle magazines has really changed much since the days of Outlook.

Research for the talk was undertaken in the National Co-operative Archive in Manchester, and I also conducted interviews with some inspiring women who were members of the co-operative women's movement at the time.

Please pass this on to anyone you think might be interested.

Keywords feature: Art Culture and Society in 1980s Britain at Tate Liverpool

I was recently asked to write this feature for the Skinny about a new exhibition which opens at Tate Liverpool this week (Friday February 28). It was a last-minute commission, and it would have been nice to have spoken to more people involved in the exhibition, but it was good to have an excuse to read more Raymond Williams as his books Culture and Society and the Long Revolution, along with his essay Culture is Ordinary, which concern the development of culture and social change, were among the best things I read last year.

Keywords: Art Culture and Society in 1980s Britain

In 1976, a book was published which offered a new way of understanding and using language, defining and interpreting familiar and inter-related words such as culture, art, revolution, family and society. Written by cultural theorist Raymond Williams, Keywords is a social, historical and cultural guide to the evolution and meaning of everyday words we often take for granted. Taking Keywords as its starting point, a new exhibition at Tate Liverpool continues the conversation Williams sparked around language more than three decades ago. Artworks from the 1980s, the decade in which the book's ideas found particular resonance among a generation of artists responding to upheavals in society, are juxtaposed with a selection of words from the book in a specially-designed exhibition space by artists Luca Frei and Will Holder. Aiming to enhance the visual and conceptual legibility of the artworks, the installation will encourage visitors to ponder the complex and often charged relationship between what they see and the language which can be used to describe it.

“The impetus of the exhibition came from conversations we had about the book with artists making work in the 1980s, who said that at the time they were beginning to be influenced by the growing field of cultural studies and by books such as Keywords as much as by art history,” explains Gavin Delahunty, Head of Exhibitions and Displays at Tate Liverpool and curator of Keywords: Art, Culture and Society in 1980s Britain. “Keywords is a good read and an easy, not over-academic way for people to engage with key ideas about culture and society. It is one individual's attempt to unpack complex words and what they meant for him and his time, which provides a tool and filter for people to understand the world around them.”

The exhibition uses artwork and language to present a very complex and diverse moment in both British history and British art. “It was an extraordinary decade where there were so many shifts in culture and society that continue to have an impact today,” explains Delahunty. It was also a confusing time. On the one hand was the affluence of the City of London, but elsewhere in the country miners' strikes, the Liverpool riots and the Campaign for Nuclear Disarmament were taking place. “A whole raft of social issues were bubbling to the fore,” says Delahunty. “The old histories were being dissolved and disintegrated, creating a fragmented moment which we have tried to capture in the exhibition.” 

Keywords also aims to showcase the work and ideas of artists who did not necessarily receive widespread recognition at the time but reflected the increasing plurality of voices in the art world. Through provocative and challenging visual and performative acts these artists helped change not just ideas around what belonged in the art gallery, but the vocabulary which was used to describe it. “In the 1980s one of the huge changes was that new voices were starting to be introduced into the art world, often drawn from what had previously been seen as marginalised communities,” explains Delahunty. “Artists were immersed within powerful new movements based around Second Wave feminism, race, sexuality and ethnicity and wanted to point out the historical and social imbalance, which wasn't representative of the diversity of the UK.”

To help the audience engage with the work and messages on display the curators went through the whole of Keywords and chose thirteen words to show alongside the artworks, looking for both their frequency and their resonance today. Among the words chosen was 'materialism', which Delahunty points out “was associated with the 1980s catchphrase 'greed is good', but is also a word that is in people's conversation at the moment and is linked to our understanding of the world and morality”. Another is 'criticism', which Delahunty links to the critical approach artists used to protest gender stereotypes and the invisibility of black and female artists in the 1980s. One word which was quickly agreed on was 'liberation', which Delahunty says is related to the development of identity politics. “A whole generation of artists were making art addressing questions of ethnicity, gender and sexuality, against a backdrop of the horrors of the British colonial past,” he explains. “There was a whole new generation of artists who were touched by that.”

The energy of the 1980s and the desire for artists to tell their stories comes across strongly in the exhibition in a series of very powerful visual statements. The curators asked artists active in the 1980s which artworks they considered to be game-changing at the time. Although several of the artists they came up with are not household names, and some of the artworks in the exhibition haven't been on display in decades, they have had an enduring influence in the art world. These include work by socialist feminist artists such as Rose Finn-Kelcey, as well as Helen Chadwick's provocative 'Carcass', last shown in 1986; this is a work which Delahunty says has “stimulated and inspired so many artists”. Displaying 'Carcass' is a logistical feat, comprising a column filled with food waste which will transform into a living sculpture as nature takes its course over the lifespan of the exhibition. Another key work is Sunil Gupta's 'London Gay Switchboard', which is grounded in the near-hysteria of the 1980s AIDS climate. The work, initially shown on a slide projector but now updated to a digital format, depicts the central information point which helped thousands of men and women access expert information on the virus. “It had a huge impact,” explains Delahunty. “It shows the day-to-day aspects of the work at the gay switchboard as well as people going out socialising. It demonstrates how, in a time of confusion and fear people still had time to hang out and be friends and get on with life.” If one work sums up the exhibition, it is Donald Rodney's multimedia sculpture 'Visceral Canker', which uses coats of arms depicting aspects of slavery, bloodlines and former colonies to speak of Britain's colonial past.

The keywords incorporated into the show do not directly correlate with or illustrate the artworks, but rather provide a 'jumping-off point' and stimulus for thought and discussion. They ask questions such as 'could you apply the word 'violence' to this artwork, or are they worlds apart?' As Delahunty explains, “the exhibition is more about slippages of language and how it changes over time, just as artworks evolve over time.” He adds: “We live in a world with a strong desire to contain life within language, but artworks can't be reduced to single words. They are complex, nuanced and textured and constantly changing and mutating.”

This is very much in the spirit of what Raymond Williams intended to show with the publication of Keywords; he hoped that the book would provide a starting point for ongoing discussions and prompt further collections of words and meanings. The exhibition at Tate Liverpool perfectly demonstrates this potential. Keywords has been reprinted to coincide with the exhibition, and is as relevant today as ever as language continues to evolve to meet new times and new contexts. As Delahunty says, “The book is so open-ended it still allows the freedom to have conversations about what words are, how we use them and how we make sense of them in everyday situations.”

For more information visit www.tate.org.uk/whats-on/tate-liverpool/exhibition/keywords-art-culture-and-society-1980s-britain.

The Shrieking Violet issue 22

Read the Shrieking Violet issue 22 online now:

This issue's cover is by Alex Humphreys. Alex uses two-dimensional imagery with a high emphasis on the use of colour and composition. With the enjoyment of combining bold shapes and techniques of mark-making, Alex aims to make work with an experimental, abstract outcome. Alex's work is hand-screen printed and lies heavily in the form of traditional print. Alex also plays in Sex Hands, one of the Shrieking Violet's favourite Manchester bands; see them at Night & Day on Thursday February 6, and at Gullivers, on Wednesday February 26, in support of another of the Shrieking Violet's favourite bands, Trash Kit.

In issue 22:

Manchester-based craftivist duo Warp & Weft introduce their Stature exhibition in Manchester Town Hall (February 24-March 9), which examines how women’s lives and achievements have been recorded in history. Warp & Weft are Helen Davies and Jenny White. Helen is an artist specialising in needlecrafts; she is interested in the social history of craft and women. She also makes monsters at helenmakes.co.uk. Historian Jenny White is interested in the way different sections of society are represented in the media and history, and is drawn to those whose stories aren’t usually told. She also takes photos for Trash Gallery.

Tom Whyman takes a look at the legacy of football pundit Alan Hansen, and the growing impossibility of having an opinion and engaging critically with the world. Tom is a writer and philosopher currently studying for his PhD at the University of Essex. Before that he lived and studied in Manchester. He blogs at infinitelyfullofhope.wordpress.com and tweets as @HealthUntoDeath.

Cazz Blase explores the alternative realities of Manchester and London in the work of Jeff Noon, Ben Moor and Neil Gaiman, where the real meets the unreal. Cazz is trying to establish herself as a freelance journalist while working as a library assistant at Manchester University. She normally focuses on music and/or feminism, but has a long term love of radio comedy and sci-fi and thought it was time to share it with a wider audience than bemused friends in cafes.

Joe Austin pays a visit to one of London's overlooked Modernist landmarks, and a hidden sculptural masterpiece, at the TUC's post-war headquarters, Congress House. Joe is a qualified architect, originally from the Midlands but a naturalised Londoner for the last 24 years or so. Joe's interests are wide (his blog best illustrates his scattergun mind), but generally revolve around writing, design, architecture, art, culture and history. He likes nothing better than learning new aspects of things he thought he knew about.

Artist and musician Henry Ireland reflects impressionistically on his experiences over the past year, accompanied by photographs from his summer-2013 tour of the UK with Two White Cranes and the Nervy Betters. Henry helps run Polite Records and lives in London with his wife Frances.

David Wilkinson discusses The Fall, The Blue Orchids and the working class autodidact, drawing on interviews with Martin Bramah and Una Baines undertaken during his PhD. David lives in Manchester, where he completed his PhD on post-punk last year. He is currently research assistant on the project ‘Punk, Politics and British Youth Culture 1976-1984’, led by Matthew Worley and John Street. He has also written for the F Word, Manchester Histories Festival and Manchester District Music Archive. At the moment David is thinking about punk and sexuality and will be doing a talk on this for LGBT History Month at MMU (Geoffrey Manton Building Lecture Theatre 6), Wednesday February 12 at 6pm. The Blue Orchids, meanwhile, are playing at the Star and Garter on Saturday February 15 at the Light it Up clubnight.

West Yorkshire-based photographer and eternal wanderer Jonathan Salmon presents some atmospheric images contemplating a new life in the country, capturing both the freedom and suffocation caused by vast open spaces. Jonathan lives down the hill from the old Yorkshire town of Queensbury, one of the highest towns in the UK, and often wakes up to an eerie fog. Jonathan is currently artist of the month, and his photographs are on display, at Trof in Levenshulme (Trof have contributed this issue's recipe, see below).

Writer and journalist Kenn Taylor contributes a poem about austerity. Originally from Merseyside but now living in London, Kenn has a particular interest in the relationship between community, culture and the urban environment.

Manchester-based filmmaker and musician Richard Howe continues his series on mental health in the movies by looking at Temple Grandin by Mick Jackson, which stars Claire Danes as a young autistic girl. Tweet Richard about films @rikurichard. Watch his latest short film, Beware, at www.youtube.com/watch?v=gDve4PXLlrw.

Jared Szpakowski introduces ALBUMCLUB, a monthly theme-based music exchange. Jared is an NHS administrator and an artist based at 3rd Floor Studios in Manchester. His work documents everything from the life and death of houseplants to the decomposition of airline chapatis, NHS paraphernalia and the contents of his wife's granddad's Bible who he never met and is no longer with us. He keeps an almost-daily blog at www.threeteabagsinanenvelope.tumblr.com and has just launched a monthly soundtrack to accompany the visuals. He is also the chairman and founder of ALBUMCLUB.

Book and print-maker Jo Wilkinson has contributed an illustrative drawing. Jo constantly battles with time, finding that there are never enough hours to draw, collage, collect ephemera, fold, cut or sew. Her small, pamphlet-style books are usually non-narrative pieces, with her drawings comprising illustrative, one-off stories on a page, although she has created one love story. 

Husband and wife team Trove, who believe in making good food from scratch, tell the story of how their cafe and bakery came into being and contribute a recipe for beetroot hummus. Trove's organic, homemade, artisan bread, from sourdough to rye, is used both in the cafe and can be found in Unicorn Grocery in Chorlton, Back's Deli in Heaton Moor, Polocini cafe, Romiley, Fig and Sparrow lifestyle shop and cafe, Manchester, Cowherds Vegetarian Cafe, Trafford, Volta bar and restaurant, West Didsbury and Eleckrik cafe/bar, Chorlton. Trove has won two Manchester Food and Drink Festival awards, one for being 'Truly Good Food Heroes' and the other for being the best 'Cheap Eats' venue in Manchester. Find them in Levenshulme, opposite the Antiques Village.

Download and print your own copy here. Read issue 22, along with back issues of the Shrieking Violet, in Salford Zine Library at Nexus Art Cafe in Manchester's Northern Quarter. Paper copies can also be found in the Working Class Movement Library in Salford.

Repeat talk: 'Woman's Outlook: a surprisingly modern magazine?' Working Class Movement Library, Wednesday 26 June, 2pm

I have been invited to repeat my talk 'Woman's Outlook: a surprisingly modern magazine?' (read a mini-review of the talk in Rochdale to find out what to expect ... ) at the Working Class Movement Library in Salford on Wednesday 26 June at 2pm, as the Library also contains volumes of Woman's Outlook.

The talk is part of the Library's Invisible Histories series, and follows an inspiring talk by the F-Word music editor Cazz Blase on women's motivations for publishing magazines and fanzines, from punk and post-punk era zines such as City Fun to the Riot Grrrl scene. Cazz's talk included an intriguing reference to Moss Side Community Press Women's Co-op, which was active in the 1970s  (find out more about the history of radical and community printing collectives and co-operatives on this fascinating website).

More information about my talk:

Woman's Outlook – a surprisingly modern magazine? 

For nearly five decades, Woman’s Outlook was the voice of the Co-operative Women’s Guild, the campaigning organisation which worked to raise the status of women both in the co-operative movement and in society, and its onetime editor Mary Stott later became a longstanding editor of the Guardian women’s pages.

From its origins in Manchester in 1919, Outlook provided an enticing mixture of articles addressing both the personal and the political, combining fashion, fiction, features and recipes with advice for working women – in many ways, not dissimilar to the content of women’s magazines today!

‘Woman’s Outlook: a surprisingly modern magazine?’ will explore some of the key issues addressed in Outlook, and look at how the magazine encouraged women to get involved in campaigning for a better world. Topics covered by Outlook such as women's representation in parliament, equal pay and healthy eating remain highly relevant today, and the talk will end by considering whether the type of content provided by 21st century women’s lifestyle magazines has really changed much since the days of Outlook.

Woman's Outlook: a surprisingly modern magazine? publication

The publication I made to present my talk about co-operative women's journal Woman's Outlook at the Rochdale Pioneers Museum can be read online below (I made some mistakes in the original version of this booklet, like mixing up a Labour and Conservative Prime Minister, but am trying to change any mistakes I spot!). Download and print your own copy as a PDF here (NB, all pictures are for illustrative purposes only – please don't reproduce them!). It was good to meet some local Co-operative members, and people from the Rochdale branch of the Workers' Educational Association, and there were some interesting questions at the end. My talk can be listened to online as a podcast:



After presenting a history of Woman's Outlook, I finished my talk by showing some pages I had compiled from current-day women's magazine Stylist, on the basis that it is the only women's magazine I have ever really read (I read it because it is given out free on the streets each Wednesday, and I also read the male version of the magazine, Shortlist, also because it is free!). Whilst there are clear differences between the two magazines – Outlook was a political, campaigning magazine with a very defined audience, whereas Stylist is basically an advertising channel and sees itself as reflecting the 'age of coffee cup politics', where issues are something to be chatted about over a cup of coffee – I wanted to show the types of topics which are considered to be of interest and relevant to women today, from reader surveys aimed at building up a picture of what it's like to be a modern women, to quizzing readers about their sex lives, to highlighting issues like abortion, equal pay, women's continued underrepresentation in Parliament, childcare and flexible working. I find it interesting that Stylist continues to profile women with interesting careers, from an oceanologist to a reverend, and how it features articles about women's status in other countries – for example, Italy – and how the lives of women elsewhere in Europe have been affected by the financial downturn. There is also a weekly international page summarising news stories concerning women across the world, and ahead of elections Stylist profiles political parties and the ways in which their policies would affect women. Woman's Outlook ran a number of profiles of Eleanor Roosevelt, and she is still being held up in Stylist today as an exemplary first lady and woman in public life. On top of that, Stylist features the type of content you would expect to see in a woman's magazine, from recipes to beauty and fashion.

I went to see the new Ken Loach film, Spirt of 45, the evening before my talk, to get some inspiration and context about the period, and would highly recommend seeing it.

I have been invited to repeat the talk 'Woman's Outlook: a surprisingly modern magazine?' at the Working Class Movement Library in Salford, which also contains volumes of Woman's Outlook, on Wednesday 26 June at 2pm as part of its Invisible Histories series.

Also related, Cazz Blase will also be revisiting the talk she did at the 2012 Victoria Baths Fanzine Convention as part of the series, on Wednesday 29 May at 2pm. 'Worlds within worlds: punk ladies, riot grrrls and fanzine culture' will discuss the role women played in the UK punk scene and the UK incarnation of the female focused, female dominated riot grrrl scene.

Talk: ‘Woman’s Outlook: a surprisingly modern magazine?’

I will be doing a talk on the former Co-operative Women’s Guild periodical Woman’s Outlook at the Rochdale Pioneers Museum next year (Thursday March 21), as part of a series of lectures on aspects of co-operative history, and would love to hear from anyone who has memories of reading the magazine between 1919 and 1967.

Working in close proximity to the National Co-operative Archive, I have developed a fascination with Outlook. For nearly five decades it was the voice of the Co-operative Women’s Guild, the campaigning organisation which worked to raise the status of women both in the co-operative movement and in society, and onetime editor Mary Stott later rose to prominence as a longstanding editor of the Guardian women’s page. From its origins in Manchester in 1919, Outlook provided an enticing mixture of articles encompassing both the personal and the political, combining fashion, fiction, features and recipes with advice for working women – not dissimilar to the content of women’s magazines today!

‘Woman’s Outlook: a surprisingly modern magazine?’ will explore some of the key issues addressed in Outlook, from suffrage and peace to maternity benefits, pensions and nursery education, and look at how the magazine encouraged women to get involved in campaigning for a better world – at the same time as helping prepare them to take on more prominent roles in co-operative societies.

Topics covered by Outlook such as female representation in parliament, equal pay and healthy eating remain highly relevant today, and the talk will end by evaluating whether the type of content provided by 21st century women’s lifestyle magazines has really changed much since the days of Outlook.

I would love to hear from any women who were members of the Women’s Guild in this period, especially those who remember reading Outlook or any other co-operative periodicals, as well as anyone who has any interest in the magazine. If you can help, or can put me in touch with anyone who might be able to help, please email Natalie.rose.bradbury@googlemail.com.

Q and A: Cazz Blase

Cazz Blase, a veteran of the zine scene who started her first zine, Aggamengmong Moggie, in 1993, is doing a talk entitled 'Making a noise: An express ride through the world of punk and riot grrrl fanzines and the UK feminist underground, 1977-2012' at the Victoria Baths Fanzine Convention on May 19. After Aggamengmong Moggie, which ran until 1999, Cazz wrote the zines Real Girls (2001) and Harlot's Progress (2002-2006). Cazz is now one of two music review editors at The F-Word website, for which she has written extensively about both women and the UK punk scene and the UK riot grrrl scene, and was a contributing author to the book Riot Grrrl: Revolution Girl Style Now! (Black Dog Publishing, 2007). At the Fanzine Convention, Cazz will be launching her most recent zine, Too Late for Cake, a collaboration with David Wilkinson (who is also speaking at the Fanzine Convention), which is themed around Stockport, Cazz and David's home town.

SV: You started your first zine, Aggamengmong Moggie, when you were just 14. What type of thing did you write about and was anyone else involved? How did you go about creating, reproducing and distributing your zine? 

CB: I wrote about music in the main I would say, particularly Riot Grrrl and indie bands, but I also used to do a lot of lists as well. I don't know how popular it was but one of the longer running lists was 'School Late Book Excuses', because at my high school you had to sign a book called the School Late Book whenever you were late for school, and you had to put name, class, reason for lateness. This led to all sorts of fanciful nom de plumes and whimsical excuses, some of which I published. I did some ranty pieces as well, and some sort of earnest investigative reporting, such as a three way investigation into the disappearance of vinyl as a musical format. That involved sending letters to record companies, surveying school friends, and going into record shops after school to get the shop perspective.

It was mainly me. A couple of years in my sister did some writing for me, particularly when she went away to university, and writers from some fanzines that I wrote for wrote for me.

I initially produced the covers by hand with a stencil, and the rest of the fanzine was typed and printed off on my mum's word processor. Later the covers were photocopied, and later still, the whole thing was photocopied. I had my own photocopier for a bit as well, which helped. Well, it was my mum and dad's, but I basically commandeered it.

I was very lucky so far as distributers were concerned because there were a lot of them, and they all seemed pretty broad minded in terms of what they would take and sell. I used Piao! for the first few years, but their catalogues couldn't keep up with the speed at which I was producing zines, and then they started to become more of a promoter and label than a distro, so I switched to Little Green Man in Manchester, who sold tapes but wanted to sell the fanzine, and they were really good – they had a subscription deal set up with it, and they were in a band (Godsister Helen) so they sold the zine at their gigs. That probably influenced content a bit as well, it meant I focused a lot more on Manchester and the Manchester scene at the time.

SV: Why did you start making fanzines and what was it about the medium that attracted you? Did it give you an outlet you might not otherwise have been able to find at that age? 

CB: I started making fanzines because of the John Peel show, I think, and the Voodoo Queens. I wanted to write about them, and there was other music I wanted to write about as well. I hadn't actually read many fanzines at this point, I'd only really read the Shakespears Sister fanzine, Harmonally Yours, which was good for band news but incredibly sycophantic in tone, and it only came out every four months, which I felt wasn't enough. As a result of that, I decided I didn't want to focus on one band only, that two months was about right, and that I wasn't going to be sycophantic.

My early style was probably NME meets the Wizzkids Handbook, with more swearing. Another influence was a magazine called Zine which was sort of somewhere between a fanzine and a magazine, and it was written entirely by its readers. They did zine reviews, so I found out a lot about zines through them. I think I'd seen at least one of the riot grrrl zines that Slampt put out by then as well.

I found the medium rather intimidating, I was a technological luddite so I sort of had to drag myself through it and teach myself how to type and use a word processor, then later photocopiers.

It did give me an outlet I might not have otherwise have had, definitely. It was fanzines or writing stroppy letters to the local paper, local MP and NME basically otherwise. There wasn't much scope for teenagers to make themselves heard in the nineties.

SV: Were you inspired by any other fanzines and were you aware of other women making zines at the time? 

CB: I was very fortunate to start making fanzines in mid-1993, when there were tons of Riot Grrrl zines around. That definitely helped. It was normal to be a girl doing a fanzine then, but a lot of them were more personal than I felt mine were. A.M has been written of since as being very personal, but I didn't feel it was at the time – possibly later on, but it was basically started as a music fanzine. I admired the bravery of Erica, who wrote Scars and Bruises, which was about depression and angst I think. One fanzine I would have loved to have read, but never got hold of, was Rampaging Teenage Pervert by a girl called Kate in London. I read an interview with her in a zine about zines once, and she sounded cool. That was a very funny queercore zine by the sound of it.

The Slampt zines, which were put together by Rachel Holborow and Pete Dale, were always good – they tended to include all sorts of people from the north east scene and beyond, and Ablaze! 10 had a massive impact on me for a long time, that was the one with all the riot grrrl stuff in, including the girl power manifesto, and Bobbins! and Grrls World did as well. Ablaze! was Karren Ablaze!'s zine, and Bobbins! and Grrls World were written by six formers in Stockport and Manchester. Grrl's World was their 'We've just been to see Bikini Kill and Huggy Bear on tour!' fastzine, and Bobbins! was a very droll indie zine, which never took itself even remotely seriously but which did have interviews with bands and stuff as well. The band Golden Starlet (later International Strike Force) also did a comic zine, which was cool. There were some cool girls in Cambridge who did a fanzine called Smitten (I think) as well, and that was really good.

What was a big influence was a teenage novel by Roger Burt called The Melanie Pluckrose Effect, which is about a group of schoolgirls stirring up a minor planning revolution in a midlands market town. I would have liked to have achieved something as major as that with A.M, but it wasn't to be.

SV: Aggamengmong Moggie ran for six years, which is a long time to sustain such a self-initiated project. Why was it successful, and what part did it play in your life? 

CB: I think it was successful because it was produced between 1993 and 1999, which was a great time for fanzine making. Also, it was mainly done during the years I was at high school when I didn't have much of an outlet elsewhere for what I was saying in the fanzine. Once I got to six form college, it was actually harder to be as productive because the work was more personally interesting at college than it was at school so I was more engaged with it. I basically failed most of my GCSEs, so I was able to use the energy I should have spent on passing them on the fanzine. Not that I would have passed them though, because I didn't feel engaged with most of the subjects on the national curriculum, I just used the time differently basically.

It actually played a bigger part in my life than I realised at the time, I didn't really think in the long term at the time but it is still remembered, and it did start me on the path towards wanting to be a writer and a journalist. I didn't really analyse it at the time though, I just did it.

SV: What did you get out of making a zine? Did you feel you were part of a wider network of people making zines at that time? 

CB: Not really, not until I hooked up with Little Green Man in about 1995 or so. Before then most of my friends who did zines or were involved with the underground scene in other ways were in London, Newcastle or Leeds. I did meet more Manchester/Greater Manchester zine writers, but not until 1996.

There were a few of us around then: Emmeline who did Soul Junk, Daniel who did I'm 5, Carl who did Fancy Biscuits, Nicola who did Meow!... I found during this period though that having friends locally was actually detrimental to producing fanzines, as far as I'm concerned, in that I basically just work better in solitude. Also, having feedback more constantly made me self conscious, and probably a bit arrogant and arsey I'm ashamed to say as well! I was quite pleased when that period was over.

SV: At the Victoria Baths Fanzine Convention, you're going to be giving an overview of zines in the punk and Riot Grrrl movements. What was their significance to the feminist underground? 

CB: These zines ran parallel to Spare Rib, Women's Report, and more mainstream feminism throughout the eighties and nineties in the Guardian's Women's pages. A magazine like Shocking Pink was set up in reaction to Jackie initially, which was the leading mainstream girls mag of the day, and it later found itself reacting to Spare Rib because it was felt by the second collective that Spare Rib didn't represent younger feminists. In terms of punk, Spare Rib had a terrible time adjusting to punk, and you can see the debates around it played out if you read back issues of Spare Rib from the late seventies, so a fanzine like Jolt, that was a punk feminist zine, helped bridge the gap between the two camps.

From a Riot Grrrl zine point of view, my take on it is that those fanzines helped to introduce a new generation to feminism, and that they were perhaps more accessible and more welcoming than the idea that you had to read a long list of really very academic books about feminism before you were allowed to call yourself a feminist. Also, the riot grrrl zines were discussing issues that were relevant to young women – such as being sexually harassed in school – that feminism wasn't discussing at the time.


SV: Do you have any favourite zines, either for their content or style? 

CB: Anything Slampt put out was basically excellent, and there was a Manchester zine by a guy called Dean Talent, called When I Grow Up I Want To Be Bobbee Gillespie that was really good as well, in that sort of beat generation romantic wanderings kind of way. Slampt were very new-style punk, very nineties punk. Messy but sincere. I also used to really love reading the Chemikal Underground newsletter in the late nineties, because they came out very sporadically but were always really funny and tended to be more entertaining in a musical sense than a years worth of NME would have been at the time.

SV: If you were a fourteen-year-old girl now, do you think you would still start a zine, or would you start a blog/online journal instead? 

CB: I would be doing a blog or a live journal, because it's cheaper basically. Having said that, I think I'm relieved in a way that the technology wasn't around at the time because there are things I wrote in my zines that I wouldn't want to go up online. You can make mistakes with far less risk in a paper fanzine, simply because less people read them and also you could destroy the evidence much more easily at the time if you really fucked up.

SV: Why do you think people are still interested in making – and reading – zines? 

CB: I think there is a romanticism attached to paper zines that is similar to attitudes to vinyl. To an extent, they have been fetishised, it has become about the format at least as much as the content. Fortunately there are some really good print zines out there, so it hasn't become completely about the format. I like Things Happen, and Shrieking Violet, because they are about their surroundings, and I find that really interesting. I did a bit of that in Aggamengmong Moggie, but aside from in When I Grow Up I Want To Be Bobbee Gillespie, I didn't see much of that when I was doing A.M. I think the reason that's more common now is because cities like Manchester, Leeds, and Sheffield have been gentrified and people are really quite discomforted by their surroundings and want to eulogise the nice bits of their cities that are left. That makes for some really good semi political writing. It could be that print lends itself more to that kind of writing because it too is in danger of becoming obsolete.

Also, with fanzines, you can say things you can't say online. Things that might invite legal action for instance, or that are too personal to go up online but you still want to put out, anonymously or not.

SV: Finally, you've made a new zine for the Victoria Baths Fanzine Convention in collaboration with David Wilkinson, who's also speaking at the Fanzine Convention, which is all about Stockport where you both grew up. It's a very traditional cut and paste kind of zine. How did you decide on that subject and style for your zine? 

CB: It was my idea to do a print zine for the fanzine convention, partly because I hadn't done one for a long time but thought it would be fun to do. Partly because fanzine conventions are the best places to sell fanzines, but also because I do a blog called Too Late For Cake, which is about socio-political and cultural goings on in Manchester and Greater Manchester, including Stockport. Some of the content for the zine has been published on the blog, but a lot of it hasn't, and it was written in a different way because it was being written for print.

The Stockport subject matter seemed obvious because it was a crucial thing we had in common, and we both knew we had a lot to say, much of which hasn't really been said before, or not in that format. I think David has been more scathing than I have. I decided to write about nice bits of Stockport in the main, because they tend to be the more ignored bits, but also because I knew David wanted to write about gentrification and redevelopment in Hopes Carr. He grew up around there so it's a subject very personal to his heart. I never really got to grips with writing about Hazel Grove, which is where I grew up, so that'll need to be left for another day. Most of my bits and pieces are about central Stockport.

Stockport is rumoured to be the biggest town in Britain, and Hazel Grove is rumoured to be the biggest village in Europe, so there's a lot to write about. The politics and political history are interesting as well, and some of it's in there – for example Stockport Workhouse – or alluded to, for example that the council was a hung council for many years.

As to the format, we could have made it look more professional just by doing a layout using Word 2007, but David hasn't been involved with zines that much and wanted to go for the traditional cut'n'paste approach because it's what he knows. This suited me because it's a style I settled on for quite a while when doing the later editions of Aggamengmong Moggie and Real Girls.

http://toolateforcake.wordpress.com

Cazz Blase will be speaking in the Committee Room (upstairs in the former superintendent's flat at Victoria Baths) at 3.30pm during the Victoria Baths Fanzine Convention on Saturday May 19.

Shape & Situate: Posters of Inspirational European Women at Victoria Baths Fanzine Convention

Leeds-based zine maker Melanie Maddison will be bringing her poster series of inspirational European women to the Victoria Baths Fanzine Convention in May, and what more appropriate place to display them than around the balcony space overlooking the former female pool?

The series, drawn from Melanie's collaborative zine Shape & Situate: Posters of Inspirational European Women, comprises the 75 plus A3 posters that have featured in the zine so far. The posters have been created by women all over Europe, using collage and mixed media, illustration, photography, commix, digital work, hand-sketched drawings, text and everything in between. The Shrieking Violet spoke to Melanie to find out more.

SV: What is Shape & Situate, and how long have you been making it? 

MM: Shape & Situate: Posters Of Inspirational Women zine has been going for three years, and three issues. Each issue has contained around 25 A5 original posters made by artists and DIY creative people from within Europe. The posters feature artwork and information on an inspirational or radical European women of the poster maker’s choosing. The aim has been to highlight the (often hidden) history and lives of radical inspirational women and collectives from Europe, as a way of connecting us with the past and the present through a cultural (re-)articulation of these women’s lives.

There’s no life that does not contribute to our collective history, yet conventional history books show us that it’s rare for women’s lives to be documented as readily as men’s, especially women in more underground, domestic, or radical spheres. I hate to think that in years to come it’ll only be the ‘elite’ people on the top of the pile who’re remembered, creating a void and mass forgetting of the great work and lives of so many people within our social, cultural and political makeup, communities, and lives. Women such as those who are collected in the zine (and many, many more besides) are important to our collective history, women who have helped shape and situate our lives whether we know it or not. I wanted to try and make a zine to honour and celebrate and inform others on some of these women.
 The zine aims to activate feminist cultural memory, to inspire in the present, and to visually bring women’s social and political history to life and into view.


SV: Have you made other zines? 

MM: Shape & Situate is the only zine I’ve got the time to make at the moment, but I’ve made many zines before these ones. My favourite zine to work on, and the one that I was probably most proud of, was Colouring Outside The Lines. Colouring Outside The Lines collected together interviews I did with a huge selection of seriously amazing contemporary female artists from all over the world. It ran for five issues between 2005 to 2009, and is a project that I plan on going back to at some point. I miss making that one but it sure was time consuming to fit in the 70 plus interviews!

I also edited the zine Reassess Your Weapons, and have made other zines, such as: Taking Cultural Production Into Our Own Hands, With Arms Outstretched, UK Ladyfest Artwork Zine, and I'm Not Waiting: Doing It Yrself Now. Plus I’ve had a hand in many other collective zines.

SV: Why did you start Shape & Situate, and what made you decide to do a participatory project? 

MM: I started the zine as I have a huge amount of love and respect for poster projects hailing from the US such as Celebrate People's History, Inspired Agitators and Firebrands: Portraits of the Americas. I love what these poster makers were creating and sharing, and how they were educating with their work. I got to thinking though that I’d love to see a more European perspective, and a wider selection of female subjects, and from there Shape & Situate was born. I’ve since shared the zines with those involved with some of the projects I mention that had inspired the zine, which was a great way to start to complete the circle. My respect for the enormous amount of creative social history projects that are being made across the world is why I include such a big list of further reading in the intro to the zine, in a hope of directing readers towards projects beyond Shape & Situate alone.

I don’t think this zine could have been anything other than collaborative (plus sometimes I think it’s the only way I like to approach making zines – who wants to only hear their own voice and ideas? I know I don’t!). It had to be collaborative as I wanted to bring together ideas of who contributors from across Europe found inspirational. To collaborate is to situate yourself within the community that you’re working with and sharing with. I wanted to learn myself about inspirational women myself, not just dictate a huge bunch of posters on who I already knew that I found inspirational myself. I learned a great deal from putting this zine together; many of the women in this zine were unknown to me before I was approached by contributors with their ideas. And, this is all part of the point really, to share knowledge and experience of women who have been hidden from mainstream history. I couldn’t have made the zine without the knowledge and desire from the contributors to tell the lives and tell the story of these women’s lives, women who had individually and uniquely shaped and situated them.

SV: How do you find contributors for Shape & Situate? 

MM: The zine has been open to anybody from Europe who wanted to make a poster. To start with the first issue was made up of friends and friends-of-friends who I approached with my initial idea and people ran with that idea. I’m lucky to know a huge amount of crazily talented and creative people (not only conventional ‘artists’, but also cultural producers who approach and make ‘art’ in a more DIY way and would never refer to themselves as ‘artists’ even when in their own ways they are), and I’m thrilled to be able to work with as many of them as I have on this project. After the first issue came out word spread a little, and I was lucky enough to have people approach me to be involved too, which worked out great.

Finding people I’d love to contribute is the easy bit (I am a huge admirer of people’s creative talents and am always on the look out for folks I’d love to work with on one thing or the other); twisting their arm into making a poster when I know that these people have 101 more pressing things to do, and ample projects of their own to be working on, is the tough bit! Which is why I’m so grateful every time a zine actually comes together and is filled with so much great work. I’m in awe of my contributors and have a lot to thank them for!

SV: What type of women are featured? Are a lot of them lesser-known? 

MM: It’s the poster makers that decided to feature them, not me. There’s a mixture of lesser-known, and more well-known women. The original brief was to focus on lesser-known women, but it’s hard to draw that distinction when it would have been unfair to omit some of the more well-known women in a project that looks at inspirational women. I didn’t want to enter into some distorted ‘popularity contest’ and refuse contributions on women who are already well-documented just because of that fact, because clearly all of these women are inspirational, and thus worth being part of this project.

The women featured come from all sorts of social, cultural and political backgrounds, and include authors and writers, scientists, teachers, sports women, political and social activists, visual artists, musicians, zinesters, performance artists, globetrotters, cartoonists, architects, aviators, actresses, film makers, strike leaders, comedians, and organisers and reformers. Amongst others!

SV: Shape & Situate: Posters of Inspirational European Women has previously been exhibited at the Women's Library in London. How did that come about and how did it go?

MM: My dear friend Red Chidgey organised the 2011 Zinefest! at The Women’s Library in London and asked me if I’d like to be involved again. I proposed to get posters made up from Shape & Situate (there were only two issues at the time) and put them on the walls. It was as simple as that! Ever since I first started getting submissions for issue 1 of the zine I knew that I’d love to see the posters in a larger format than the A5 zine alone, so when Red asked me if there was any way I’d like to contribute to the Zinefest I knew exactly what I’d like to see happen. The fine folk at Footprint, Leeds, did a great job at laser printing A3 posters of each page of the zines for me.

I’d been involved in the 2009 and 2008 Zinefests at The Women’s Library, again, due to Red’s organisational skills and vision. In 2009 I curated an exhibition of Comix Zines made by UK female creators. It was such a great project to work on. There was a huge amount of work on the walls (and hung from the ceiling!) in that exhibition and it was really well received, hence, in part why I think Red asked me to be involved again in 2011. I’m so grateful for what Red, and the staff at the Women’s Library have allowed me to get away with doing in that building!

Incidentally, please sign the petition to save The Women’s Library from closure. 

SV: Are you going to keep adding to the poster series and making more Shape & Situate zines? Do you plan to exhibit the posters in more places? 

MM: I’ve genuinely no idea. I’m one of those people who can’t really think into the future (I’m perpetually petrified of the future), and am usually just driven by ideas that come to me at 3am instead of planning anything out properly. Maybe there’ll be a fourth issue of the zine, and even more posters to add to the exhibition, I’ll wait and see how well received issue 3 is first, and wait to see if I get any offers of contributions to another issue – I hate badgering people into contributing. At the moment though I’m trying to focus on hopefully getting the exhibition shown in as many places as I can this year; I’d love for more people to be able to see all the great work that’s been made for this project, and also to spread the word about all the subjects that this project has managed to give voice to.

http://remember-who-u-are.blogspot.co.uk

Manchester's Modernist Heroines — publication and events

Manchester Modernist Society, The LRM (Loiterers Resistance Movement) and The Shrieking Violet have teamed up for a collaborative project exploring the stories of ten fabulous North West women spanning the fields of invention, aviation, media, science,geography, design and architecture throughout the twentieth century and into the twenty first. Manchester’s feminist history did not stop with the Suffragettes!

Anyone (please note: these are not women only events!) is welcome to join us on Sunday March 6 at the Town Hall in the Women of Achievement room from 1-4pm for your free copy of 'Manchester's Modernist Heroines’. Manchester's Modernist Heroines is a special edition of the Shrieking Violet fanzine (with a cover beautifully stitched and collaged by Rosa Martyn, who studies Hand embroidery at the Royal College of Needlework) which aims to commemorate their achievements, uncover many more via your own favourites, and who knows – inspire some heroines of tomorrow. An exciting range of contemporary Manchester women – ranging from artists and writers to tour guides and even a dance troupe! – has responded to the ten women, and the results include essays, interviews, poetry, planned events and artworks.

The publication can also be read online here:

Open publication - Free publishing - More the lrm

Or downloaded and printed here.

At 3pm on Sunday March 6 The LRM will be curating a walk inspired by the work of Modernist Heroine Professor Doreen Massey focusing on flow, energy, gender and exploring space. The wander will uncover some of the hidden histories and power relationships which have shaped the city; Manchester is made up of myriad stories and some about our marvellous modernist heroines are absent from the official narrative.

This is the start of an ongoing project; please tell us about your heroines on the day or add them directly to a special Modernist Heroines page on the Modernist Society website.

Woman's Outlook magazine (visiting the National Co-operative Archive)

Working a few metres away from the National Co-operative Archive, occasional glimpses into what lays within has made me fascinated by Woman's Outlook, a bi-weekly (and later weekly) magazine produced for the Women’s Co-operative Guild between 1919 and 1967. I recently visited the Archive on my day off work to have a closer look.

Woman's Outlook was an enticing and, in some ways, surprisingly modern, mix of the political and the domestic that combined tips for housewives and working women with fashion, fiction and features. Its editors included Mary Stott in the 1930s ‘40s and ‘50s, who went on to edit the women’s pages in the Guardian.

The Women’s Co-operative Guild (which still exists today as the Co-operative Women's Guild) was formed in 1883 and worked for the improvement of the status of women, championing women’s rights, campaigning for women’s suffrage and demanding other important changes to society such as maternity benefits. Issue one of Woman’s Outlook describes the guild as: “Over 50,000 woman co-operators who have banded themselves into a guild to work through co-operation for the welfare of the people, seeking freedom for their own progress and the equal fellowship of men and women in the home, the store, the workshop, and the state.” Co-operation is described in a later issue as 'not only an ideal form of trade for the community' but also 'the fairest system under which the consumer can purchase his needs'.

The first issue of Woman's Outlook has on its cover the WCG logo, which depicts a woman gazing out over an industrial scene. As encapsulated by the logo of the WCG, Woman's Outlook was aimed at broadening its readers’ viewpoints, offering information and comment on the issues and laws affecting women in the UK, as well as global economics and politics, and preparing women for an increasingly prominent role in industry and society. In its own words: “We hope to assist her in her outlook upon industrial and social questions, and to give her thoughts, through our pages, something of the freedom of a flock of birds…we dream of it as a friend of all, seeking always to help forward to better things — a fuller life, more social opportunities and a wider choice of spheres of civic usefulness for women.” Later covers featured glamorous, stylised women either at rest or engaged in various pursuits such as golf, with my favourite being the decorative covers of illustrators such as G Beuzeville Foyster (who also illustrated children's books) in the 1930s.

Though Woman’s Outlook was published from Long Millgate in Manchester, it had an international perspective, with regular features on women and their place in societies all over the world, considering issues such as Scandinavian countries’ attitude towards prostitution and what it was like for Muslim women living behind the veil. As well as sending journalists to the House of Commons and to see a police court at work, it went out and about visiting women and celebrating their achievements, featuring profiles of women ranging from prominent trade unionists to Canada’s first women senator and 'the world's champion female aviator'. As it noted: “No paper would live that confined its news to events of its own town and nation. Readers, even the most rabid and nationalistic, want to know all about the world…the world is alive and we can no more escape being members of it than we can jump out of our own skin.”











































When Woman’s Outlook started in 1919, women over the age of thirty had only recently gained the vote in England, and throughout its almost fifty year lifespan the magazine urged its readers to be politicised, join trade unions and get involved in campaigns such as: increasing the number of women MPs; providing nursery education; raising the school leaving age; abolishing the marriage bar; bringing women’s wages into line with men's; providing pensions; giving women equal compensation to men after industrial accidents and disarmament, to name but a few. Discussing a 1930s inter-country naval conference one writer pondered “I have been wondering if there is no dramatic action we women could take up so as to impress the world with our serious attitude on the question”, and elsewhere the magazine wondered 'is it any wonder we women get fed up and become radicalised' doing 'the same jobs day after day'. The magazine also offered self-help tips, from how to make a portfolio and advice on chairing and managing meetings — women were encouraged to become board and committee members in co-operative societies — to suggesting setting up study circles to share experiences with other women.

Whilst Woman’s Outlook urged women to take up causes and from its start gave women advice on how to find jobs, it acknowledged that many women were based in the domestic sphere — indeed, many women, such as teachers, had to give up their jobs upon marriage well into the twentieth century — and offered practical advice on hygiene, nutrition, child rearing and maternity as well as hints on furnishing the home and ‘smart and practical’ patterns for knitting and sewing. Love stories — often didactic tales with messages warning against moral ills such as taking credit and investing money unethically — sat alongside entertainment features on art and literature and more serious, educational articles on housing solutions and women’s working conditions.

Published during times of high unemployment, the magazine encouraged thrift and making the best out of limited means, and recipes were introduced with titles such as ‘You can’t eat your cake and have it but you can eat your orange and have the rind for use in countless ways’ and ‘When shelves are empty. Emergency jams from dried fruit.’. Women were encouraged to write in with recipes and advice, with the magazine running competitions ranging from making your own wine, including how much it cost (a potato and raisin wine, its submitter adding the detail that it was ‘in colour like best whisky’, triumphed), to the best ways to make the others around you happy at Christmas. A regular children’s page, ‘For the Bairns’ offered riddles, stories and advice such as how to look after pets.

From its inception Woman’s Outlook argued for world peace. It continued production through the second world war, printing a woman’s war time diary, a rousing series on pioneers of social reform throughout history, growing advice for allotments and recipes for making rations last as long as possible — whilst also running pieces scrutinising the distribution of food and questioning policies such as conscription. Women entered into debate through its pages, writing in to discuss topics ranging from the benefits of vegetarianism to political hot potatoes. Light relief was provided by a regular film column. All the while Woman’s Outlook urged for a Britain to be rebuilt as a fairer, more equal society after the war with better housing and access to healthcare and education.

By 1967, though modernised and resembling more of a newspaper, the magazine was no longer viable and closed for economic reasons. As the final issue noted, however: “Outlook has outlasted many of the women’s magazines that were concerned only with the more trivial aspects of a woman’s life.”

Woman’s Outlook was one of a number of publications produced by the Co-operative Movement. The magazine, and others including the Our Circle children’s magazine and the Co-operative News, can be found in the National Co-operative Archive in Holyoake House, Hanover Street, Manchester.

Cover images are used by permission of the Co-operative Press.