Our last event of the year was our second Advisory Board meeting which we held in Weston Park Museum in Sheffield. It was a great opportunity to update the Board on what we've been up to, and to get their thoughts about how we can continue to develop the project. There were even mince pies, courtesy of Claire our Project Officer!

We were also treated to a tour of ‘Who We Are’, an exhibition of photographs by Martin Jenkinson currently on at Weston Park Museum in Sheffield. Martin’s photographs captured some of the iconic protests of the 1980s including the Miner’s Strike. We would all heartily recommend it, it’s well worth a visit! 

All that remains now is to say thank you from all the whole team for the support the project has received from different communities, individuals, and organisations who share our commitment to capturing and celebrating women's efforts to bring about political change. We can't wait for 2019! 

​We felt very fortunate to be able to head out to Vienna in December and take part in a conference on Protest and Dissent. 

The conference brought together a wide range of academics, as well as some activists, to discuss research and experiences of protest. 

We had a great session talking about the project, sharing our ideas, and inviting delegates to try out some of the activities we're planning to use in the community pop-up events. 

Some of the conclusions we shared with the conference included:

• Women’s narratives illustrate the material & symbolic meaning of place-power relations
• Understanding how power flows between people and places makes it possible to see how different types of people, and different kinds of contention, shape and are shaped by place.
  • ​For instance, power can be found in the relations between people. These relations have meaning which are often associated with particular communities or places. The effort to defend these communities can be a cause of protest. In this way, it's possible to see how power flows from places through people to shape how protest plays out. 
• The interaction between protests and places reveal people’s changing relationship to political and social power,
  • For example, when people are no longer permitted to protest in particular sites because they are owned by private companies, power flows away from the citizen. 
• Methods and ideas can be mutually supporting when they involve a process of empowerment, participation and democratic process of knowledge production 
  
  • ​For instance, one way of emancipating the process of urban design is to enable citizens to participate in determining how the environment is designed 

The conference was also a really good opportunity to try out some of our activities with the conference delegates. 

The photos below show us taking over the conference hotel bar to test some of our ideas! The activities we tried out were 'Paths of Resistance', which invites participants to map the route of a protest they've been on, and 'Design a Protest Space' which involved designing a 'good' site to hold a protest in. 

We were extremely grateful for colleagues' constructive and good humoured approach to our ideas, and we're now rethinking some of the activities based on their feedback

And of course, while we were there, we took the opportunity to have a quick look round Vienna and get into the festive spirit. 

The project really came to life when we met our volunteer citizen researchers for a two-day training session in late November. It was great to meet people as inspired by us by women who have fought for political change. As well as volunteers from the wider community, we were really pleased to welcome on board members of the Richardson Institute intern programme who will be working with us over the coming months.

We were delighted that two colleagues from Lancaster University came along to help deliver the training. Paul Newnham, from the Library, showed us how to carry out desk-based and archival research, whilst Dr Sam Riches from the History department, taught us how to conduct oral history interviews. 

We ended our first day with a meal at The Sun Inn in Lancaster, where as well as enjoying some nice food and great conversation, we took the chance to talk to some of the other diners and recruit a few participants!