#WomenMakeHistory
As many of you know, I’m a big enthusiast for women’s history and at this time of year I would normally be leading groups on heritage walks for both Glasgow Women’s Library and Maryhill Halls. At GWL we’ve been trying to think of ways to take the walks online, and this week I led our first ever Twitter “walk”! Even if you’re not on Twitter, you can follow it by clicking on the tweet below.
Hi, I’m @AnabelMarsh, one of GWL’s Women’s History tour guides. We can’t take you on any walks at the moment, so I’ve created a virtual one combining my favourite stops from our West End Walk and Suffragette City West Trail. Let’s begin at Kelvingrove Museum and Art Gallery 1/16 pic.twitter.com/kHE9ri9i4o
— Glasgow Women’s Library (@womenslibrary) June 9, 2020
We’re also inviting everyone to look out for representations of women in their own areas all over the world. Can you think of any statues, buildings, plaques, murals, paintings, graffiti, or street names in your area? My fellow guide, Joy Charnley, has written a blog post with some ideas which you can access from the first tweet below.
Turning a walk into a @womenslibrary herstory treasure hunt are these gateposts from North Kelvinside School. The school was demolished and replaced with housing about 20 years ago, but the gateposts marked Girls (and Boys) remain. #WomenMakeHistory pic.twitter.com/BgoVTos6Mr
— Anabel Marsh 🏴 (@AnabelMarsh) June 10, 2020
If you’re on Twitter and / or Instagram, post your findings and tag them with @womenslibrary and #WomenMakeHistory. I’ll be adding contributions to my Twitter feed daily, or as often as I can think of something – it could be as prosaic as a gatepost, as you can see in the second tweet above. It would be great if some of you could join me!
The Glasgow Gallivanter 
I think your Twitter tour was a great idea, and I enjoyed looking through it! I know a lot more about women’s history in my local area now after researching it for my talk back in March (seems a lifetime away now), but I’m struggling to think of place names off the top of my head that actually commemorate women. There’s meant to be a memorial to the women who took part in a washerwomen’s strike, but I could never actually find out where it was. I’m going to do more research and get back to you on Twitter or Insta if I find anything!
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Thanks, Jessica! I’m glad you followed the tour and enjoyed it. I thought you might be someone who might be able to contribute so I hope you can.
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I love your stories Anabel. God bless you.
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Thank you for your kind comment!
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You are welcome Anabel. I am Dr Clifford.
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How’s your health and family 👪?
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Thank you, we are all well, and I hope you and yours are too.
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Yes 👍 Anabel. How’s the covid 19 situations there?
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Improving is the best you can say, but still worrying.
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I understand how you feel Anabel, everything will become normal again. This is my email 📤 address in case if you need any medical attention you can always inbox 📥 me.
drcliffordwilliams225@gmail.com
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Thanks!
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You are welcome Anabel, you can send your email 📤 address too or inbox 📥 me.
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Anabel, what a great way to adapt to the current situation and still lead a women’s history walk. I have been sticking close to home lately, but when I do any more travelling around Vancouver Island, I am going to make a point of looking for public art and other indicators of women’s contributions in our area.
Jude
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Thanks Jude, it really seemed to work well and was very popular. I’ll be interested to find out what you spot in your own area.
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what a brilliant idea . . we’re exploring how we might do virtual walks for September. So far live streaming and Twitter have come up for ours too. Really hope it takes off for you
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Thanks! We have more twitter walks in preparation and a couple of other volunteers are doing video trailers for some of the walks. I also went to an online walk by another group – it was live, in that the guides were speaking to you in real-time via Zoom, while sharing images and short animations from their screens. It was their first attempt too, and had a few ragged edges while they got to grips with the technology, but it was very good. Not sure about live streaming on an actual walk – certainly on ours there would be a lot of boring stuff in between stops. I prefer the “here’s one I prepared earlier” approach.
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How fabulous so impressed with what you are doing. Just hoping we can get all of ours off the ground in time for September – lots of ideas out there but little in the box yet!
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Any Winchester gems you could tag #WomenMakeHistory @womenslibrary on Twitter gratefully received! So far it has mainly been me.
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ooh yes, will do . . . .I will be scheduling a new round of tweets for WinchesterHODs over weekend so will look out some #WomenMakeHistory 🙂
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Great! And add @womenslibrary too if you can.
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I will 😀
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PS and yes I was wondering that too on the live streaming, will keep you posted as to whether or not it happens!
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It might be ok if you have lots of extra stuff to tell them as you walk, but it would be time-consuming to prepare.
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Very time consuming . . . it is a couple of the lecturers who are pondering it at the moment. Suspect in the the end they will do what you are doing.
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Even the Twitter walk wasn’t live. We took the photos and I composed the text at home. Squeezing something meaningful into 240 characters needs a surprising amount of thought. Also, the same problems about gaps while you are walking would apply. I hate following threads when you never know when the next bit is going to pop up!
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Maybe I should book a Zoom chat with you, or you could join our online forum where we are going to be discussing this kind of stuff with our event organisers. You’d be very welcome
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It would be lovely to see you on Zoom!
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ooh let’s do it then 🙂
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Great! I’ll email you, later today or tomorrow.
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😀
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Looks like you’re going global, Anabel! 🙂 So great you managed to do a tour (or more) virtually on Twitter. Seems like a success as well.
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Thanks Liesbet! It was fun to do, and went down well.
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What a brilliant idea!!
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Thank you! It seemed to work well.
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I have added the ‘Rise’ statue at Glasgow Harbour on instagram with the #womenmakehistory – hope that was right 😊
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I’m not on Instagram, but sounds right to me! Not sure if it works the same way as Twitter where you can tag @womenslibrary too? I don’t know the statue, will need to look out for it.
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It’s in the beginning of this video https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=03dAHb94nko
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Oh yes, thanks, I’ve seen pictures of it but didn’t know it’s name. I don’t know how we’ve missed it actually, as we have walked down there.
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I saw a link to your GWL tweet on the BBC News website! Hope it will bring you tons more traffic and some new followers…
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Brilliant, thanks Lynne! A couple of other people saw it too but I haven’t been able to find it myself, nor could the first person who told me find it again. It must have been one of those blink and you miss it things where it scrolls on to something else really quickly. The Twitter tour was certainly very popular.
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You made me think twice when I saw the word “herstory”. Very clever, Anabel.
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I can’t take credit for the idea, but I’m certainly taking it and running with it!
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What a great idea! I’m not on Twitter, but I do have an Instagram account. I don’t get out and about much lately, but I’ll keep this in mind when I do.
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Thanks Janis! Think laterally – even small things can tell a story.
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