About

Our values as an organisation are based on kindness, respect and collaboration to build community alongside, and at the heart of all the work that we do.

Our first major project in 2013 celebrated and marked the centenary of The Great 1913 Women’s Suffrage Pilgrimage, where women walked from Land’s End to Hyde Park demanding their right to vote. Dreadnought created a new play Oxygen, with Natalie as its writer and Josie its Director and Dramaturg. It was toured to all the original stopping places along the pilgrimage way one hundred years later.

In addition there were forty-five arts and heritage way-marker projects led by individuals and communities along the pilgrimage route, reaching 6,500 people across the region. All of these were inspired by this story of women walking and protesting peacefully, which captured people’s imaginations, and who wanted to know more and to find out about their own ancestors part in the campaign Votes for Women.  It has been a model for Dreadnought’s work ever since.

In 2015 and 2016 we went on the road to develop a new play The Orchard as part of our Rebellious Sounds Roadshow.  Here we connected with a range of SW communities to listen in to their responses to this developing new play. The conversations were electrifying and exciting.

Occupy the Airwaves began as a 6 hour broadcast in 2016, becoming a 16 hour Community Radio takeover on International Women’s Day, 8th Wednesday March in 2017. This celebrated and shared the diversity of voices and stories of women and girls from across Exeter and Devon. In collaboration with Phonic 106.8 FM, Exeter’s Community Radio and Exeter Phoenix.

Dreadnought South West became a charitably incorporated organisation in 2016. Our Purpose is:

‘To advance the education of the public, and in particular but not exclusively women and girls, in the role of women in society from both an historical and modern day perspective, in particular by using the medium of the arts.’

In 2017 The Orchard became known as The Cause, an imagined meeting between the great women Suffrage leaders; Millicent Fawcett and Emmeline Pankhurst. Once again written by Natalie and Directed and Dramaturged by Josie. Funded by Arts Council England’s Strategic Touring programme we toured the play across the South West region in 2018 to mark the first Votes for Women in 1918.

This time also saw us move in a new direction as we established the Rebellious Sounds Archive. A unique collection of oral stories of women’s stories of activism and social change making from across the South West. Touring as a mobile listening booth that looks like a voting booth. A nod to the past whilst looking to what women are campaigning for now. It has toured to over 40 places and now has 72 stories as part of its story. 

We now have a song book of songs inspired by the archive and songs from Oxygen have been sung thousands of times across Cornwall and beyond. Beautiful banner’s have been made and toured with us. One was part of the UK’s very first Banner Bienniale. Occupy has seen its 10th year and hundreds of women have now taken part and had their first heard on air. Craft based projects have taken place inspiring conversation and community.

We have collaborated with a wide range of partners and organisations across the region from Land’s End to Chippenham in Wiltshire across the years, and in 2023 we celebrated our centenary year with events in Cornwall with a residency at Kresen Kernow.

As we look to what next we do so with great sadness in our hearts as our Co-Founder and Director the inspiring wonder woman Josie Sutcliffe is no longer with us in person. We shall how ever embrace with full gusto all that we have learnt from her to see what path we make take.