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.

Modernist Heroines tour, People’s History Museum, Thursday 18 August

Five years on from the joint LRM, Manchester Modernist Society and Shrieking Violet project, Manchester’s Modernist Heroines will be revisited in a free walking tour for the People’s History Museum at 2pm on Thursday 18 August.

Coinciding with the 100th anniversary of International Women’s Day in 2011, Manchester’s Modernist Heroines celebrated ten overlooked women from the twenty and twenty first-centuries with connections to Manchester, from the architect Rachel Haugh to the geographer Doreen Massey to the Egyptologist Rosalie David and the sculptor and designer Mitzi Cunliffe. It culminated in a psychogeographic walk around Manchester, responding to sites significant to Manchester’s Modernist Heroines, and a publication bringing together creative and critical responses to the women by contemporary Mancunians, from interviews and essays to poetry and drawing. Read online:

The Modernist Heroines tour will be led by artist, researcher and activist Morag Rose as part of a series of events running alongside the People’s History Museum exhibition Loitering With Intent, which celebrates ten years of the LRM and brings together new contributions from writers, artists and activists as well as items from the LRM archive. For more information and to book visit www.phm.org.uk/whatson/manchester-modernist-heroines-walk.

Loitering With Intent continues until Friday 14 October.

Olive Shapley poster for Shape & Situate zine

I have contributed a badly linocut poster about radio producer and presenter Olive Shapley to the new edition of Melanie Maddison's Shape & Situate: Posters of inspirational European women zine (as seen at the Victoria Baths Fanzine Convention in May!), which will be launched at Leeds Zine Fair at Wharf Chambers on Sunday November 4.

Now in its fourth edition, Melanie's project celebrates underlooked women in all fields of society. I felt compelled to create a poster about Olive because I became intrigued by her during my involvement in the Manchester's Modernist Heroines project. Of all the women we focused on, Olive is the one I keep returning to and trying to find out more about, and my poster is inspired by the presence she still has in the Manchester suburb of Didsbury today – as well as being honoured by a nursery school bearing her name, there is a street named after her. Olive's former home, Rose Hill, where she housed Vietnamese boat people and single mothers, became Didsbury's first £1 million house in 2002. I have an unfulfilled ambition to procure some of Olive's radio programmes – particularly her 1930s Engels-inspired documentary the Classic Soil, and children's shows – with the aim of organising an Olive Shapley listening party, but they are proving hard to come by (the Classic Soil is available at the British Library, but apparently 'the ending is missing' from the recording, and I imagine it would be very expensive to hire copies from the BBC).

Melanie Maddison and Lindsay Starbuck will also be running a social history workshop at Leeds Zine Fair, entitled 'Remembering who we are', which will feature examples of inspiring social history zines and provide an opportunity to contribute to a collective zine being compiled on the day. The zine fair is being hosted by Leeds' Footprint Workers' Co-op, and will be well worth attending!

The Shrieking Violet is two! Issue 15

Issue 15 of the Shrieking Violet is out now, roughly coinciding with the fanzine's second birthday (which would have been August 1 if real life hadn't got in the way!).

It features a passionate defence of urban green space Birley Fields (under threat from MMU's new 'super campus') by 'lefty, greeny veggie', Keith Reynolds, who writes the blog Valiant Veggie about creating a mini-wildlife habitat on a balcony in inner-city Hulme, as recently featured in the Manchester Evening News. Keith is "passionate about his work (in mental health), community development, nature and green issues and making stumbling efforts to be "the change he'd like to see in the world".

Brian Rosa, an artist, curator, urban researcher and PhD candidate in human geography at The University of Manchester, writes about Manchester as the 'original modern' city.

John Mather is a Civil Engineer by profession. His passion for swimming has led him to compete in Windermere's 'Great North Swim' and also swim between Scotland's Western Isles. He once ventured into Siberia's (very cold) Lake Baikal. John has returned closer to home to contribute a page about Levenshulme Baths from an illustrated guide he is compiling to Greater Manchester's swimming pools.

I have written a mini-guide to the summer wildflowers which can be commonly found in Manchester, inspired by the nature writer Richard Mabey whose most recent book is entitled Weeds: A Cultural History (listen to Mabey in the Wild, his recent Radio 4 mini-series on wildflowers here). I have also included my interview with Ancoats Peeps artist Dan Dubowitz.

The Shrieking Violet is all about taking inspiration from the everyday, and Sam Lewis from London-based band Being There, who have just recorded their debut album, asks whether the American beat poet Frank O'Hara was saying something or nothing. Alex Boswell has drawn a picture of Frank O'Hara.

Bury artist and poet Josef Minta has contributed some poems accompanied by an illustration. He has just published his first collection of poems and images for the Kindle, called The Abbreviated Day.

Manu Pérez, who is originally from Seville but lives and works in Manchester, has written a recipe for traditional Spanish Easter dish torrijas (this fanzine has been a long while in the making!).

The cover is by Manchester-based graphic designer Alyson Exall.

Read issue 15 online here:

Open publication - Free publishing - More fanzines

Free paper copies have been left in various locations around the city centre such as Good Grief! shop, Oklahoma, Koffee Pot, Common, An Outlet, Manchester Craft Centre, Nexus Art Cafe and Piccadilly Records. The fanzine can be downloaded and printed here. Issues 1-14 can also be downloaded here.

To request a free copy in the post email Natalie.Rose.Bradbury@googlemail.com. Email this address also if you would like to contribute to future editions or are interested in helping out with making the design more interesting and exciting, or join the facebook group here.

More news

The Manchester's Modernist Heroines walk (a collaborative project with Manchester Modernist Society and the Loiterers Resistance Movement) will be repeated on Saturday September 3 during the DIY Feminist Festival. Meet at 2pm in Platt Fields Park. For more information see www.nowhere-fest.blogspot.com.

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.