Within the LGBTQ+ community or within some certain aspect of the community, seeing someone who identifies as being Muslim or as brown is very… is very… you know, is like a minority within a minority, so at times particularly at…
Blog Archives
Sandhya Dave
Transcript by Jayde Stevenson Just got some funding for a project called Growing Resilient Communities, and in that, that project is about bringing people together to learn wellbeing techniques, together with each other, people who have never met each other…
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Sahar Alnaas
And the message for woman here you know, just unite and work together. Woman are so powerful when we are… that’s why you find, you know um… a lot of um misogynist men uh put a lot of uh energy…
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Rupa Chilvers
So I think the challenge that I had and I… I… you know 20 years later I can say I did it wrong but I did start my career thinking that my… the… my skin colour didn’t matter because I…
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Neomi Alam
Um I think working with Exeter Mosque, umm… I realised that part of the problem was that communication does have to be really crystal clear, umm, we… and we have to be really careful about the words that we choose…
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Neli Montes de Oca
Recorded: by Jayde Stevenson Transcript by Jayde Stevenson Capitalist system that is about making money and growth of money, and there is little space for actually growth as a human being… there… there is no value really for capitalists to…
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Michelle Leicester
I think that my own childhood experience and being in a mixed-race family and living in a very kind of white area, we… we really… we did experience a lot of abuse and discrimination as a family growing up. And…
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Anjali Ramanan
So for me this probably looks more like challenging things in conversations, you know, asking people you know ‘what did you mean by that?’ – you know, challenging conversations around race, um people asking me where am I really from,…
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Anon
In 1971 I went to the American University of Beirut, uh, to study, uh, medicine… I was completely taken with the, uh, activities as a student, I was a very active, very energetic… um activist in Lebanon. You cannot not…
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Sam Sleeman
I was really inspired by Greta Thunberg the Swedish activist and I was wondering why… you know why isn’t this happening in the UK? And then… kind of that converged with me, I was on Facebook… and social media has…
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Jenny Lloyd
‘We were very embedded in Exeter Labour Party and there were obviously these big national rallies, so we went up and then Kate… Becca was in a pushchair. When I was in the Labour party, I organised… I was a…
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Natasha Pavey
Recorded 05.06.19 by Carmen Talbot. Transcript by Jayde Stevenson I’ve kind of, always wanted to do, kind of, more… and, kind of like… cos I thought I’ve always been quite like a… I don’t know, like passionate person I guess…
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Ann Trevenen Jenkin
Mmm – yes, I’m founding member of – em – Mebyon Kernow, but I’m also – I was the first woman Grand Bard of Cornwall [tut] so that – that was quite a – er – flag for freedom [laughs]…
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Moira Macdonald
Recorded on 20.05.2019 by Carmen Talbot. Transcript by Jayde Stevenson All I knew was that there were women, first of all at school that I felt attracted to, and then at university. And it wasn’t until a long time afterwards……
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Rose Gander
Recorded 07.01.2019 Transcript by Jayde Stevenson I’d been a Unison – or before that a NALGO (National and Local Government Officers Association) trade union member since the age of 18 when I first started work, and my father said to…
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Penny Avant
Record on 07.01.2019 by Carmen Talbot. Transcript by Jayde Stevenson Um my daughter – I’ve got three daughters and two of them have been really active with refugees, um actually going to north France and building things and shelters and…
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Zion Lights
Recorded 08.05.2019 by Carmen Talbot. Transcript by Jayde Stevenson It was kind of a few days before London I just thought I’ve gotta go, this is really important and it’s gonna be big and I knew, you know, there’s a…
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Diana Derioz
Transcript by Jayde Stevenson My mother was an activist you see and she just passed it down. They were talking about breast feeding on the radio and I was thinking, yeah my mum gave me that and I gave it…
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Rosemary Schonfeld
Recorded by Carmen Talbot on 24.10.2018 Transcript by Jayde Stevenson I probably need to go back a little bit, um, in terms of how I got into the… I suppose the activism anyway, which was through the gay liberation movement,…
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Rosemarie Cawson
So I have now ended up in a care home and I’m very old, but I remember, and we have just worked out how old I was when I attended Greenham (Greenham Common), well visited Greenham and I was a…
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Fiona Green
Transcript by Jayde Stevenson It was 1980… or ’81 – I can’t remember exactly… um, my mother had gone on ahead – she’d gone on in 1980. Um, and she rang and told me the whole story about the women…
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Angie Whitehead
Recorded 12.10.2018 by Carmen Talbot Transcript by Jayde Stevenson I first went out to northern France in 2000… September 2015 to Calais, umm… and then within the end… the beginning of October I visited the camp at Dunkirk, umm… and……
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Anon 3
There was a lot of opposition locally to the traveller sites so like support for the eviction, so there was quite a lot of like hostile – it was a very hostile environment what we were doing was sort of…
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Alison Williams
Transcript by Jayde Stevenson From Dartington… um… I’d joined Dartington College Women’s Group and… we… basically organised buses to go up to Greenham Common… and we’d stay there, umm… we’d stay there in a little caravan, sort of four of…
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Lizi Jamal
I was just thinking first of all uh about how my parents considered me rebellious. My Mother oh one of the memories she often says about me and she says to people about her rebellious daughter and her feminist daughter…
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Clare Krojzl
Transcript by Jayde Stevenson I wouldn’t have called it activism at the time, uh but I became aware when I went to live in the Czech Republic in 1984 which sounds an awfully long time ago (laughs), uh I –…
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Cllr. Tia Roos
Being a Labour councillor for me was, um,– there were two defining moments for me in deciding to take politics up, um, which I think is a really hard area for women to get into. It’s where women need to…
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Melissa Hardie
Transcript by Jayde Stevenson I’ve never slowed down from earliest days and I’m now 79. People are forever remarking that they don’t know how I do everything I do. I’ve never looked upon it as being particularly social activism. In…
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Jenni Kerswell-Frost
Transcript by Jayde Stevenson Right… it’s a bit like film – um, rather drastic. I had three young children, I was living with an abusive husband… he had already set fire to my daughter… and… one night when he’s gone…
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Ruth Stedman
I said to Dora as we were doing meals on wheels that there was an Amnesty group, I would join it in Penzance. And she said: “why don’t you start one?” I said “well, I’m dyslexic and I can’t write…
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Diana Wayne
Transcript by Jayde Stevenson This particular event, uh it was… uh 1979 and I was president of one of the local branches of the inner London NUT (National Union of Teachers). I’d set up a working party for devising strategies…
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Pip Wright
Transcript by Jayde Stevenson Since I’ve been working with singing, I’ve had the good fortune to train for Singing for the Brain for people living with, um dementia, and their carers. And then after a few years based on that,…
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Alison Meaton
Transcript by Jayde Stevenson I was given early retirement because I had been unwell, umm, and I wasn’t able to work any longer, but… I still felt I had a… you know, I have a… my brain is fine and…
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Dr. Sarah Wollaston
Transcript by Jayde Stevenson I think it’s representing a really important issue that affects thousands and thousands of women, and men as well, and trying to see whether I can actually make a difference personally by taking an Act of…
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Avril Silk
Transcript by Jayde Stevenson I happened to be singing with a friend of mine- a guitarist called Ivor- at the youth and community centre in Taunton at some… special party- I can’t remember the ins and outs of the party,…
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Cllr. Desna Allen
Transcript by Jayde Stevenson My Grandfather firmly believed there was no place for a woman with education because she will only get married. Unfortunately, he communicated this to my mother who, uh, would refuse to allow me to stay on…
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Sarah Scaife
I was aware of feminism from being- dunno thirteen fourteen and I I identified myself as a feminist from then and when I was seventeen I went to Greenham Common on the um embrace the base d- day when there…
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Hilary Coleman and Sally Burley
Transcript by Jayde Stevenson Since I was about 19, I guess, I was playing Cornish music, um, on my clarinet and also singing. Umm… and then I met Sal- how many years ago? Oh, twenty something… yeah 20 years ago…
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Sophie Hodge
Transcript by Jayde Stevenson I knew from an early age that I didn’t want to have children and when I was… uh when I was at school I… I became pregnant and I… I had my son- I… I made…
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ANAIRDA
Transcript by Jayde Stevenson I am Latin American, I come from a political family that are also quite artistic as well, but umm… so when I was 13… between 13 and 14, we started with our newspaper in the secondary…
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Carol Steele
In this Rebellious Sounds Archive Listening Booth extract, Carol Steele talks about her formative years and activism for transgender rights in the 1970s. Carol runs Transfigurations, a support group for trans people in Torbay. transfigurations.org.uk/ Transcript forthcoming
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Janet Haley
Transcript by Jayde Stevenson I saw an article in The Cornish Guardian, uh, two ladies who’d, uh, found out that they weren’t gonna get their pension and they were organising a meeting. So, I said right, that’s something I’ve gotta…
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Dr. Linda Thomas
So um with the ocean waste dresses, it kind of [laughs] a bit evolved by accident. So I was, um, uh, already um making upcycled clothing. Um, and then I just happened to see this photo to — showing uh…
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Elizabeth Marchant
I just began to think about, you know, how many children in the world – um, do – suffer and are treated less than they should be. And – from that, I uh you know, the amount of money that…
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Alix Harris
When I started working with the Barbican Theatre, um, we — I was involved in quite a lot of projects which were around social, social justice. I’m very responsive so I feel like I create work, create theatre pieces, that’s…
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Maddie Harris
Transcript by Jayde Stevenson I originally… I guess… feel as though… it might- yeah, when I sort of started to become an activist was when I first went to Dunkirk refugee camp, which was in September 2015. So… I wouldn’t…
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Jessie Seal
So I guess I do find the, like, term ‘activist’ quite difficult, because I think it conjures up an image of doing really difficult physical stuff all of the time that’s quite extreme. And sometimes I don’t feel like that.…
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Anne-Marie Culhane
Um, so I feel that activism permeates a lot of the work that I do. Um. Because what I’m exploring in my practice, um – which I frame in different ways as artist, as community activist, as community worker and…
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Anon 2
I don’t think activism came into my life until probably [pause, sighs] 2010 or beyond, so over the last eight years. Um, I’d, fled a very abusive – relationship. I say very, it wasn’t physical. Um – apart from the…
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Nicci Wonnacott
I was at art college and I thought I would come out painting Devon landscapes [laughs], was my pre-conceived idea of being an art student, and actually I came out as a performance artist interested in art action so art…
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Carol – WASPI
Hi I’m Carol and I’m the Devon – one of the Devon – coordinators for, um, Devon WASPI supporters’ group. We support the WASPI campaign. WASPI stands for Women Against State Pension Inequality. It was formed, I think about three…
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Clair Beckett
So my name is Clair Beckett, I’m 30 years old and I am a dance artist based in Plymouth and in May 2017 I was diagnosed with Tourette Syndrome. I’ve always been involved in disability arts and have been developing…
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Anon 1
The extract from this story has been re-read by an actor to preserve the donor’s anonymity. There’s a lot of need for activism, is my feeling. There’s a lot of oppressive forces. My dad was a coalminer, and it had a…
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Dr. Amy Frost
Transcript by Jayde Stevenson So… Bath went through a really dark period, the darkest period of Bath’s architectural history, um… was between about 1963 and 1975, umm… and it became known as ‘the Sack of Bath’ and during this period…
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Eileen O’Hara
Please note this story contains strong language. So, I think it’s fair to say that my story of activism in the mental health arena is about challenging authority and, um, and winning. Um, so I spent a month in the…
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Catherine Cartwright
In 2013, 2014 I was an artist in residence at, um, Exeter’s Women’s Refuge over five months. I wasn’t really (clears throat) sure what I was doing but what I wanted – my aim was to find out more about…
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Linda Regan MBE
I think I would say that I’ve been involved in some form of activism since I was 16/17 years of age which is a long time ago now as I’m just about to hit 65 and I would say that…
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