Celebrating 10 years!
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International Women’s Day, Friday 8 March
This was our ninth year of occupation! Once again there were 16hrs of live broadcasting women’s voices on Phonic FM, Exeter’s community radio.
We shared an exciting mix of audio contributions and fantastic music across the day.
This year’s provocation was ‘Tipping points’, with all sorts of discussion and exploration on International Women’s Day.
All the programmes will be available online soon.
Occupy the Airwaves 2024 is generously supported by Awards for All Community Fund, with thanks to Players of the National Lottery, Devon Community Foundation, Devon County Council. Dreadnought is also currently funded by Heritage Fund, Fawcett Devon, Arts & Culture at the University of Exeter and Elmgrant Trust. A massive thanks to all our funders and to Phonic FM and Exeter Phoenix for their ongoing support and collaboration.
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Here are some photos from Occupy the Airwaves 2023
📷 Ruby Ingelheart
Rebellious Sounds Archive at Exeter Library
The Rebellious Sounds Archive was in residence at Exeter Library over the autumn.
We celebrated our ten year Anniversary in Exeter with an exciting Craftivism residency at Exeter Library. Everyone was invited to be part of a collective of public making as across the week a unique large scale textile banner is created. Each day was be led by a local Community Artist who brought their individual style to the making week.
We also held three workshops.
Drop in Textile Making Activity
Tues 7, Wed 8, Thu 9, Fri 10 Nov – 11am to 2pm
Sat 11 Nov – 10am to 3pm
Free, Drop in
Location: Main library space, Exeter Library
On Wednesday 8 November, there will be a BSL interpreter at this event
Join us to work alongside amazing women artists to contribute to and help create a large scale, multi-medium textile art work. This daily activity will be led by a different artist each day, and be taken in new and exciting directions to form a part of a larger textile banner as we celebrate 10 years of creativity at Dreadnought South West. Join the conversation.
Do Your Dance workshop with Chloe Whipple
Tuesday 7 Nov
10 to 11.30am
Free, click here to book
Location: Rougemont Room, Exeter Library
DoYourDance is here to serve bodies that miss the freedom of a dance floor but aren’t up for a nightclub or formal dance class. A space that gives you the freedom to feel comfortable in your unique movement style, and cultivates your confidence and ability to dance your unique beautiful dance.
With support from Dreadnought South West, we will spend an hour and a half together, moving through many music genres in celebration of their ten-year anniversary.
We will spend the first half of the workshop developing and encouraging ourselves to move in new ways. This happens through a series of invitations from me to you. For example, ‘do an elbow solo’ – a simple, playful suggestion that you can immerse yourself in. The second half of the workshop is handed over to you, to dance to a handful of songs, where you can practice your elbow solo, or just freestyle your way into a sweaty mess or even lay down and relax your bones. I leave this up to you!
DoYourDance is a place for you. I am just a guide offering you options into exploring the depths of moving in your body, but ultimately you decide how much you move, and how long you stay.
Shaping the future through stories
with Sandhya Dave
Thursday 9 November
12.30 to 2.30pm
Free, click here to book
Location: Rougemont Room
Exeter Library
What motivates you to change? How can that be turned into a powerful story for activism and change? Come and explore how your personal story matters and can resource, empower and ignite you and others to take action and create change. This workshop will be interactive, possibly funny, where we will drop into our hearts, share together and explore how we can individually craft our lived experiences to become voices for change. To tell your story is to weave in the possibilities of a new World!
Exeter Seedbank
Sat 11 November
11am-1pm
Free click here to book
Location: Rougemont Room,
Exeter Library
Drop by and have a chat with some of the Exeter Seedbank team while helping pack up flower seeds for the seed swap scheduled for 18 February 2024. It’s a lovely form of community activism! Stay as long as you like and take away some seeds for yourself to plant in the Spring.
Exeter Seed Bank is a Community Interest Company founded in 2020 and dedicated to reviving local seed-saving, an ancient craft. Exeter Seedbank are interested in creating a ‘bank’ or ‘library’ of seeds that work well in our soils and adapt to the changing climate.
Each year, they hold a seed swap and distribute seeds for free. They hope that the ‘loan’ of the seeds taken will mean that people save some seeds of whatever they’ve grown and bring them back to replenish the bank.
Please let us know if you have any access requirements or if there are any barriers you have to attending the events. You can contact us here: info.dreadnoughtsw@gmail.com
This work has been made possible by Heritage Fund and thanks to Players of the National Lottery. We are also kindly supported by Elmgrant Trust, Arts & Culture at the University of Exeter, Devon Community Foundation and Fawcett Devon
10 Year Celebrations in Cornwall, June 2023
Photos: Annemarie Bala
As part of our Dynamic Collections, National Lottery Heritage Fund project, we were at Kresen Kernow for a week in June 2023, collaborating with this amazing organisation and its staff. We ran a programme of free events and drop-in sessions. An evening of Songs of Rebellion led by Claire Ingleheart was an emotional and celebratory one. The Rebellious Sounds Archive was in residence from May to the end of July, introducing this dynamic collection to a new audience, and encouraging the recordings of exciting new stories and voices from Cornwall.
On Monday 19th June we walked from Lands End to St Just with a fantastic group to mark 10 years since launching Oxygen in 2013, and to continue telling the previously unknown story of the women of the Great 1913 Suffrage Pilgrimage. Then we were in Penzance on the 21st June to celebrate with The Hypatia Trust with songs and speeches from Oxygen in Chapel Street.
Thank you to everyone who took part, turned up and came along on this journey with us. It will stay with us for a long time. We cannot thank you enough.
Supported by Heritage Fund, many thanks to them and National Lottery Players supporting the discovery, collection, preservation and telling of great stories about women’s heritage.
You can find out more about what we did here.
Occupy the Airwaves 2023
You can listen again here.
Dreadnought South West is celebrating its 10 year anniversary this year! We began back in 2013 by making and touring the play Oxygen, which marked and celebrated the centenary of the Great 1913 Women’s Pilgrimage from Land’s End to Hyde Park. We thought that this would be a one off project, but here we still are ten years later, still exploring and finding ways to champion great stories about how women are creating social change in their communities. The response to this beginning was a great inspiration for us to continue our work. We now produce annually Occupy the Airwaves, a 16 hour occupation of community radio on International Women’s Day, and we host the Rebellious Sounds Archive. A unique collection of South West stories of activism and social change. These are the pillars of our work to date. We also toured another play in 2018; The Cause which also saw the creation of the Rebellious Sounds Banner. This year we aim to reflect and celebrate all the work we have achieved and those who have joined us to make it happen. Watch this space as we will be publishing how to get involved soon.
Rebellious Sounds Archive
Dreadnought South West’s Rebellious Sounds Archive completed an 18 month tour of the South West during 2018 and 2019, culminating with a performance of 6 newly commissioned songs inspired by the archive at the Cornish Life Museum in Helston in July 2019. This was made possible by the National Lottery Heritage Fund.
You can currently access all 48 story extracts here, and have access to the songs of Rebellion here.
If you are interested in the archive please do get in touch: info.dreadnought@gmail.com
