Dr Emma Darragh and Dr Ellie Crookes hope to engage more Illawarra women to share stories about the history of activism in the region. Photo: Supplied.
Illawarra women are looking back to march forward, with researchers and writers exploring the hidden and creative shapes of activism, while hoping others will join them on this journey of discovery. Dr Emma Darragh and Dr Ellie Crookes will join an International Women’s Day panel at Shellharbour this Saturday 8 March to speak on their new research project which delves into the archives of Women Illawarra.
The Liz Hilton Memorial Fellowship recipients, who grew up in the Illawarra and now lecture at the University of Wollongong, share a passion for feminist literary criticism and causes which prompted an interest in exploring the abundance of historical material on women’s activism within the region.
“We thought there must be something about women in these archives,” Dr Crookes said. “Then we came across this Women Illawarra archive and it’s absolutely huge; it’s way bigger than we thought; there’s something like 35 boxes plus ephemera.”
They originally expected the project to be more of a historical study but they’ve been captivated by the creativity of the material and are letting the research evolve depending on what they find.
“We are only at box three so we haven’t really scratched the surface,” Dr Crookes said. “We started finding amateur poems and newsletters talking about creative writing groups, craft groups, lesbian dance parties that were held every month in the 80s, just these kind of moments of creativity as an expression of community, womanhood, aligning the radical elements.
“In these newsletters, even in some of these reports from the meetings, there’s such warmth and they’ve got a real sense of humour these women, and there’s a lot of poetry,” Dr Darragh said.
“So we’re leaning into that playfulness as well and seeing how they use creativity to bring the community together as part of their pursuits.”
The archives have shown that the activism within this group took many forms, with acts of service playing an important role.
“We think about marches, we think about loud voices and that’s so important as part of any kind of movement, but what we’ve found so far is that it’s also a lot of quiet work, it’s community building work,” Dr Darragh said.
“It’s not just about that marching – they had a van that they would hire out really cheaply to people who needed it; they had meeting rooms where groups could come together to meet and talk and make plans for whatever their organisation was doing.
“There were even these ads handwritten in these newsletters offering single mothers a cheap house to rent.”
They have already found ways these historical materials directly reflect our modern-day life.
“I was reading a newsletter from 1985 and there was a woman talking about how she and a group of women protested at a Steelers game because there was a man on the team that was being charged with domestic violence and they were picketing the fact that he was still being allowed to play,” Dr Crookes said.
“That same issue is still being repeated now; there’s still instances in violence against women and people fighting against that, the same exact issue.
“And I think that it is showing the longevity of this; it’s not ‘women are complaining about it now’, no, women have been complaining about these things for generations.”
Creative writing pieces, journal articles and exhibitions are all already being explored as potential ways for the community to engage in the work as more is discovered.
But Dr Darragh and Dr Crookes want to do more than just show the community this work, they want to engage people to be involved in telling their own history.
“We don’t just want to write some articles; we want to contribute to the archive; we want to find out other untold stories,” Dr Darragh said. “A lot of women might not have had a chance to share their stories, so we’re hoping we might get some attention from a few people that haven’t been heard from.
“This is about local women. We are local women – we want to talk to local women and spread it more broadly,” Dr Crookes said.
They will join doctor and writer Sonia Henry, and dispute resolution practitioner and counseller Rosemary Gattuso as part of a free event, IWD Panel: Writers, Researchers, Women Marching Forward to further discuss their work and experiences.
The event is at Shellharbour City Library Saturday 8 March, 10:30 am, with free tickets available through the Shellharbour City Council website.
To contact Dr Darragh and Dr Crookes about being involved or finding out more, please email [email protected] and [email protected]
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