Glasgow Women’s Library is an organisation I co-founded and have had a key leadership role in developing. It grew out of an earlier programme I co-founded, Women in Profile and was launched in 1991. Conceived at the outset as a project rooted in equalities and feminist agendas, GWL has been a steadily accumulating, wholly donated collection of remarkable records, library resources and museum objects with a continuous, strong creative mission, involving partnerships and links with a wide array of artists, architects, designers, writers, filmmakers and others. It has grown into a well used, well respected and influential cultural resource accessible to the widest range of users and visitors. I have been involved in all aspects of its history from its origins as a grass-roots, unfunded community resource into a Recognised Collection of National Significance and the sole accredited museum dedicated to women’s history in the UK.
I am currently a Co-Director with responsibilities for GWL’s creative development, partnerships and strategic work with co-Director Sue John, the GWL Board and wider team. My work over the past three decades and more has included; commissioning, curating and collaborations with thousands of emerging and established creatives, enterprise and fundraising, oversight and direction of an ongoing, groundbreaking learning and events programming, publishing and the development of GWL’s sequence of premises. The Library has a staff of over twenty specialised team members, supported through a thriving volunteer programme and is now housed in an extensively refurbished, accessible, award winning building in the heart of Glasgow’s East End. I have had a significant role in developing the organisation’s specific and evolving approaches to working, its management and its organisational culture. GWL is notable for bringing a genuinely diverse range of people through its door, from its neighbourhood in Bridgeton to researchers from across the world, those seeking support to build their confidence in reading and writing to Turner Prize winners, activists and academics. I have built partnerships and expertise through my work at GWL with academics, third sector and NGOs, activist organisations as well as in the Libraries, Galleries, Archives and Museums sectors, these connections are reflected in the facets of work at GWL.
The Glasgow Women’s Library story and my involvement with it since 1991 is one of challenging (inequitable) orthodoxies, demonstrating endurance in the building of an independent, equality rooted library, archives and museum resource and the creation of a truly unique institution. GWL has played its part in shifting thinking in what libraries, archives and museums are for, who is represented in them and how they can be led.
I am currently a Co-Director with responsibilities for GWL’s creative development, partnerships and strategic work with co-Director Sue John, the GWL Board and wider team. My work over the past three decades and more has included; commissioning, curating and collaborations with thousands of emerging and established creatives, enterprise and fundraising, oversight and direction of an ongoing, groundbreaking learning and events programming, publishing and the development of GWL’s sequence of premises. The Library has a staff of over twenty specialised team members, supported through a thriving volunteer programme and is now housed in an extensively refurbished, accessible, award winning building in the heart of Glasgow’s East End. I have had a significant role in developing the organisation’s specific and evolving approaches to working, its management and its organisational culture. GWL is notable for bringing a genuinely diverse range of people through its door, from its neighbourhood in Bridgeton to researchers from across the world, those seeking support to build their confidence in reading and writing to Turner Prize winners, activists and academics. I have built partnerships and expertise through my work at GWL with academics, third sector and NGOs, activist organisations as well as in the Libraries, Galleries, Archives and Museums sectors, these connections are reflected in the facets of work at GWL.
The Glasgow Women’s Library story and my involvement with it since 1991 is one of challenging (inequitable) orthodoxies, demonstrating endurance in the building of an independent, equality rooted library, archives and museum resource and the creation of a truly unique institution. GWL has played its part in shifting thinking in what libraries, archives and museums are for, who is represented in them and how they can be led.
In recent years I have been increasingly involved in a more intentional, critical appraisal of my own role in the development of GWL, of institutional knowledge sharing alongside developing and defining the approaches to feminist leadership. I speak and write about my ongoing reflection, learning and development at GWL (and independent work contexts) in my blogs and in other contexts. In this process I have been supported, productively challenged and inspired by the Library’s teams over three decades and in dialogues with colleagues involved in progressive cultural organisations locally and globally.