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Scenes at the Museum

31/3/2018

Along with five other members of BFWI I attended an event at the Royal Albert Hall last weekend. It was chaired by Lynne Stubbings, the National WI Chair and featured talks about the history and the future of the WI movement. Ann Stamper, the WI Archivist, went through the early years before the WI was big enough to need the Albert Hall for its Annual General Meeting but had already organised itself into many of the good practice still used today. Then Charlotte from the Shoreditch Sisters WI talked of the physical problems of setting up WIs in London and ran through her WI’s successful campaigning activities. Charlotte would definitely have made a good suffragette if she had been born many years earlier than she was. Lynne concluded by giving the figures for membership at present and gave us some details of future events.
Then two of us scampered across Hyde Park to take a very crowded underground train to the Barbican where the Museum of London was hosting an afternoon of speakers whose subject was the Suffragettes. There is an exhibition in the Museum at the moment. First up was Diane Atkinson whom we had heard speaking at Denman College but this didn’t matter as she altered the angle of her talk slightly and she is easy to listen to. Next Julie Purves talked about the personalities of the women drawn into the suffrage movement. Elizabeth Crawford followed to give an interesting exhibition of the artistic talent among the women shown in their posters, cartoons and general publicity material. She pointed out that they were ahead of their time in their use of advertising leaflets and merchandise. Caitlin Davies concluded the session by giving us an illustrated talk about the history of Holloway Prison and its part in the treatment of the imprisoned suffragettes. Caitlin has written a book called “Bad Girls” which I should imagine would be useful reading in support of the WI campaign for Care not Custody.
The novel which the local WI Reading Group has been reading this month was “Behind the scenes at the Museum” by Kate Atkinson which has nothing to do with real museums as she is likening our lives on display to others as museum pieces but we keep the background history which led up to our present day character shut away in the drawers and cupboards of our personal memory. We all enjoyed reading Kate’s novel as she is a favourite author with our group. It was good to have something which made us laugh although it was a sad story telling of early deaths in childhood, disfunctional marriages and poor childcare. Doesn’t sound funny, does it? A case of if you don’t laugh you might cry.

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Different angles

20/3/2018

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It has been a busy WI few days. Last night the Chase Group of WIs met at the invitation of the Early Birds WI in Winslow. As usual there was a wonderful supper spread and a warm welcome on a bitterly cold evening. The speaker was Peter Keegan a professional artist operating out of the Claydon Gallery. We watched a charcoal portrait of one of the members present come alive off the flat surface pinned to the board. Peter talked as he worked and rarely blocked the view of what he was doing, which does sometimes happen with this kind of demonstration. I think there were a lot of people present who will be keen to visit the Courtyard Studios on the Claydon Estate.
It was a capacity audience in the Second Space at the Waterside Theatre in Aylesbury on 16th March. We were treated to a production by the Ubiquitous Theatre of “My mother said I never should” written by Charlotte Keatley. Apparently, the play has been set as a work for GCSE students and has been up for drama awards. The play is about four generations of women from the same family from the 1940s to the present day but with flashbacks. It covered the relationship between mothers and daughters and the social climate of the day. The use of a male voice-over introducing each scene giving us dates and ages became a bit tedious but I could see why it was necessary: this process is more easily done in novels. All the actors were female and very accomplished and they held the attention of the audience throughout. The characters had all disregarded their mothers’ advice and “played in the wood” so that they had had to struggle to raise a family either singlehandedly or with the memory of what might have been. I personally thought that once the initial scene had established the main drift of the play, succeeding scenes involving children and spirits could have been discarded and shortened the performance somewhat because it was a very long play. However, the writer had engaged our emotions and there were some witty and amusing lines included. It certainly highlighted the conflict between home and career which still exists today. The concluding relationship between the grandmother and the teenager left the audience with a warm and positive feeling of hope. Thanks are due to BFWI for giving us the chance to see this production in our county.
The discussion group talked about the prison service at its meeting this week. There is conflict of opinion here too. Many of the public believe that the prisons are there solely to punish the criminal and to ensure the safety of the outside world when the wrong-doer is behind bars. Others hope that some sort of cure can be achieved and that prisoners can be prepared to return to a life after sentence with the tools to change their ways. Whichever way one looks at it the prison service is suffering from lack of staff and physical space to reduce tensions. We questioned why some sentences were for prison at all and the different lengths for incomparable offences. The WI has been working on removing the mentally damaged criminals from normal prisons but there is a chronic lack of hospital spaces. Also the WI resolution on Care not Custody tries to tackle this problem: drug addicts bring added tensions and counter productive elements into the cells. It all gets back to finances on both sides of the argument. I’m ashamed to say we all forgot to mention the good work being done in women’s prisons where WIs are being opened as reported in the last edition of WI Life magazine.

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With knitted brows

14/3/2018

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About a dozen of the WI members this evening had had to expend considerable powers of concentration at the Investigation and Discovery Day but were delighted to sit back to watch a restful demonstration of Ikebana by Ruriko Risai Kojima. Wearing traditional Japanese costume, she produced three flower arrangements in which she converted twigs that we would have confined to the bonfire into works of art.
The ballot for the Winslow WI Denman bursary was conducted and it was an appropriate time for the acting president to read out the letter from NFWI in response to adverse criticism of maintaining the College which had been aired in the Daily Mail.
The celebration of International Women’s Day this year has resulted in lots of media attention to the role of the WI in history and in present society. Many of our past resolutions have tackled inequality in different fields but this was a sort of blanket coverage of the unresolved issues. Another topic of interest to a crafty membership is the discovery that knitting is therapeutic in dealing with stress and anxiety. The clicking of knitting needles has been known to drive some out of the home but now it can be part of a programme of mindfulness.

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Investigation and Discovery

13/3/2018

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Investigation and Discovery 7th March
This event has become so popular that the BFWI Education and Current Affairs Sub- committee has had to admit that it has outgrown the Gateway at AVDC, Aylesbury and is looking for a larger venue to avoid having to ballot the members for tickets.
The first speaker was Dr Mark Spencer who worked at the Natural History Museum for many years: he is an expert in the use of natural history collections in the study of climate change and forensic biology. Mark began by telling us about the work of Linnaeus, the father of taxonomy, who started to name and paint every plant including some which he more or less sponsored Capt. Cook to bring back from his voyages of exploration during the 1700s.By comparing modern specimens with those in his collections it is possible to study climate change on crops, ferns, coral and seaweeds .Plant growth gets out of sync.as the atmosphere heats eg. aphids are not available when needed by blue tits and things such as ragged robin are in decline. The botanical collections provide a source of DNA in research in pharmaceuticals and agriculture. He concluded by advising members to save any pressed flower albums in their possession and offer them to local museums as they are of value.
The second speaker Professor Elizabeth Tunbridge had started out in molecular and cellular biology at Bath University but then had moved to Oxford and specialised in neuroscience. She is presently the lead in a research group in psychiatry working out how genetic and environmental factors impact on the function of dopamine. I must admit that at the beginning of this talk I quaked thinking how is it that this young girl can use so many words whose meaning I cannot understand. However after a few minutes I realised that she was very skilfully leading the audience into an understanding of what she was doing ie. trying to treat the symptoms of psychiatric illnesses where the brain function is affected by genes and proteins bearing electrical activity. Gently she introduced us to RNAs (ribonucleic acid which codes and de-codes genes), to COMT which blocks Dopamine and to MINION (the DNA sequencer). At the end I felt enlightened about the human genome and could imagine some of what is happening in the human brain and how difficult it is to plot why things go wrong and how to repair the damage with drugs yet stop them from interfering with other organs. Neuroscientists always work with post mortem tissue so Elizabeth stressed the need for the Brain Bank and the UK’s biobank.
After lunch another slip of a girl Louise Hall who has been working on flood defence schemes in East Anglia gave a presentation: she described with slides her successful delivery of the £20m replacement of tidal defences in Great Yarmouth and recovery schemes in Essex following the East Coast Surge in 2013.She is also Commercial Services Manager for the £300m Thames Estuary Asset Management 2100 programme. We looked at her technical drawings for calculating the flow and weight of water and engineering budgets; we saw her team manoeuvring huge cranes along esplanades and doing bolstering work below the water in winched cabins. She concluded by asking the audience to encourage their family members to study engineering and she stood there a living advertisement for females at the top of the engineering ladder.
The final speaker was another female engineer and leader. Naomi Climer had studied chemistry then moved into engineering but obviously her real forte was in broadcasting and communications for the technology industry via the BBC and ITV in Europe and USA. Naomi talked about the Internet of Things: the ether is not overflowing with communications between people on social media, it is heaving with conversations between things--- 50 billion machines talking to each other: remote controls for heating , soon driverless cars advising each other, Satnavs and robots to name but a few. It is going to be perpetual connectivity between everyone and everything. Naomi finished with a cartoon of what she imagines our lives will look like in 50 years’ time---but it isn’t a cartoon, it is already happening. Again, what a wonderful explanation of the technical future and of course, she wants more scientists and technicians to come forward to STEM education.
Talk about food for thought we certainly were provided with excellent speakers and will not need to be encouraged to attend next year’s event. The questions were good throughout and it was obvious that the members appreciated being talked to at a steady pace and did not feel they were expected to receive dumbed down information. All the speakers seemed to value our attention.

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www what women want

1/3/2018

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Well, it could stand for that in an age when everything is reduced to abbreviations. At the last local WI’s monthly meeting we were asked to remember the experiences of the Suffragettes in the fight to get the women the vote a hundred years ago. There have been many articles in the press and on the media to commemorate the occasion. We now take this right for granted and indeed many do not even bother to exercise their freedom to vote. We don’t have to fight as those women did to achieve recognition in society: after two female prime ministers, it’s proven. At present it is still a struggle to get equal pay and in other cultures the battle is far from won.
The WI persisted in working towards providing educational opportunities for its members and established Denman College after World War II and now we hear that some members think this is a drain on WI finances and should be closed. Another snub to worthy achievement and based on misconceptions as none of our subscriptions is used to support the college. Our current membership certainly lacks the drive of the early stalwarts: imagine, large WIs closing because they cannot get officers. What’s the point of being on a committee if you will not take a turn at being an officer?
So if we don’t appreciate having the vote and we don’t want to undertake responsibility as an officer at any level, what do we want? It still comes through that women join to be a member of a group within the community, to enjoy the company of other women and to learn about the world we live in; to learn crafts and to help others worse off than themselves wherever they live and to have the recognition of being able to speak up about matters of social importance. Isn’t that what the WI is about? Isn’t that what we need, a framework with the power to achieve what the individual cannot achieve on her own?
The resolution selection process is entering its final stage and two of the topics featured in the media recently. The first case of a father being sued for his part in allowing his daughter to undergo FGM and the continuing fight by the young Royals for improved care for those suffering from mental illnesses.
At least 4 members of the local WI have been to Denman College during February to listen to Diane Atkinson talk about The Remarkable Lives of the Suffragettes. They all appreciated the presentation, enjoyed being in that lovely house and looking out over the gardens and meeting members from all over the country over a super meal. Many visitors new to Denman were vowing to come back and went home armed with the latest brochure of courses. It is the jewel in our crown: for Heaven’s sake let’s hang on to it!
The local WI’s interest groups have met during February to read, to sew, to eat and to walk. Soon they will be making poppies in various media for Remembrance Day and attending the events planned both by BFWI and by our Group Convener. A full schedule of things at home and with friends in the wider community.

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