Breakthrough Welsh Women

Creating the Banner 

Being Human, the UK’s national festival of the humanities, announced that its theme in 2022 would be ‘Breakthroughs’. This prompted a partnership between Swansea University’s Cultural Institute and the South Wales Miners’ Library, who produced a successful proposal to host a festival event involving the creation of a banner celebrating ‘Breakthrough Welsh Women’. 

Staff at the South Wales Miners’ Library and the Richard Burton Archives conducted core research and curatorial work, identifying and gathering sources relevant to this subject with a focus on materials from their respective collections. These included various images, video clips, oral history interviews, slogans, protest badges, and banners. Texts to accompany these materials were also produced, to provide some historical context and articulate the particular sense of ‘breaking through’ in each instance. 

These materials and texts then provided the basis for a series of five workshops, which took place during the Being Human festival 10-19^th November 2022. https://www.beinghumanfestival.org/2022/event-series/breakthrough-welsh-women

The workshops were conducted through the medium of Welsh and English. Two were open to the general public and delivered at the South Wales Miners’ Library, Swansea, and the DOVE Workshop, Banwen, while the remaining three involved working with children at local schools; namely,

During the workshops, Dr Gwenno Ffrancon, Director of Academi Hywel Teifi, Swansea University, and Eve Moriarty, a PhD student studying English at Swansea University, each delivered introductions on the theme of ‘Breakthrough Welsh Women’ and facilitated the workshops. They were accompanied by staff from the South Wales Miners’ Library, Sian Williams, Head of Special Collections, Lucy Donald, a local artist, and Mark Heycock, Swansea University’s Art Collection and Creative Engagement Coordinator, who helped participants translate the historical materials, their own designs, and other symbolically resonant images into the form of a collage. Two banners were created – one featuring text in Welsh and another featuring text in English – with a Welsh-made woollen blanket used as a backdrop. 

The banners were unveiled at a special public event held at The Glyn Vivian Art Gallery, Swansea, on the 19^th November 2022. The inaugural unfurling of the banners was conducted by Mair Francis, a founder of the DOVE Workshop; Sally Burton, President of the South Wales Miners’ Library; and Jill Burgess, a former member of Swansea University Council. 

Audience members were then invited to make badges to further embellish the banners, reflecting past traditions of pinning protest badges to miners’ trade union banners.

The banners have been added to the South Wales Coalfield Collection at the South Wales Miners’ Library.