Lecture - Dr Cynthia Hammond: Making Space: Activism, Landscape, and Women's History

On the outskirts of Bath, England, a remarkable feminist landscape took shape between 1909-1912. During these years, over sixty women visited Eagle House, a private home, to plant a tree or shrub in a carefully designed arboretum. This field of trees was intended to be a living monument to suffragettes and suffragists, who were fighting to gain the right to vote for women of all classes. The "Suffragettes' Wood" (also called "Annie's Arboretum" after the famous working-class suffragette, Annie Kenney) is the only known example of collective feminist landscape design in England. During the 1960s, this landscape was destroyed to make way for a housing estate, leaving only a few material traces behind. Fortunately, an extensive photographic archive survived, and was made public, digitally, in 2008. It was this archive that alerted Cynthia Hammond to the existence of a powerful feminist history in Bath, and led to her research-creation work, "The Suffragettes' Orchard." This paper will tell the story of the Suffragettes' Wood, its creation, decline, and destruction. It will also tell the story of how, starting with a small public art project, a community came together to create the city's first public monument to women. On International Women's Day 2011, three trees were planted in Bath's public spaces in honour and in memory of the feminist presence in this historic city.  

Additional information

Where:  
Carleton University Art Gallery, Carleton University,1125 Colonel By Dr, Ottawa, ON K1S 5B6

When:
Wednesday, March 5th, 2014, 4:00 pm (a reception will follow)

Related links: 
-The publisher page of Dr Hammond's book.
-Dr Hammond's website.