Being brave
Adele Patrick of Glasgow Women’s Library talks to Eleanor Mills about feminism, empowerment and tenacity
Adele Patrick has always been confident that Glasgow Women’s Library would take off, even if the feminist values that drive it have not always been in vogue.
Patrick founded Glasgow Women’s Library in 1991 off the back of the buzz that came out of the city being European Capital of Culture the year before. She has championed its cause ever since.
“We want women to support each other, talk to each other, mentor each other,” says Patrick, who is the lifelong learning and creative development manager at the library. “We want people whose paths would not normally cross to find each other here in the women’s library.”
This year marks the 25th anniversary of Glasgow Women’s Library, which is far removed from what people might perceive as a traditional library. This is a place of activism, with a packed programme of events, talks, walks and reading groups that all have a social impact of some kind.
“This is one of the hardest, most deprived areas in Europe,” says Patrick of the library’s east Glasgow home, where it moved three years ago. There are lots of unemployed people in the city and there is also a large immigrant population, and Patrick and her colleagues at the library work hard to engage audiences such as this.
“Getting non-English women involved can be tough because of the language barrier, but engaging these women through their migration histories to Scotland has been a really useful tool to get them to talk,” says Patrick. She points to a model that a woman has made of her home in Lahore; rather different to a Glaswegian tenement.
Modest beginnings
The home of Glasgow Women’s Library is now in a striking stone building, but it hasn’t always had such grand settings.
“There was a period where we were in the Tramgate area of the city and to get to our office we had to use an appalling lift,” Patrick recalls. “If you can imagine that a lot of women have to build up the courage to visit us, whether for support, literacy learning, access to our archives or for the library – then they would encounter a really dark lane, have to go up that rickety lift and then see water pouring into the building. I remember witnessing one of my colleagues holding a brolly over her computer. That place was grim.”
Did she ever think about throwing the towel in? “Many, many, many times,” says Patrick, but she never did.
Patrick has been through thick and thin for the library’s cause, living hand to mouth at times, but it’s all led to what she now sees as a golden age. Her tenacity has also stood her in good stead to lead the Being Brave theme of this year’s Museums Association (MA) Conference, which is taking place in Glasgow on 7-9 November.
“I think being bold is a good way of learning,” she says. “If you visualise something strongly enough I believe that it will come true in one way or another. Right now, we are very much a visualisation of some of the ambitious dreams and ideas that we had years ago.”
She’s excited to be involved in the MA Conference, which has People and Places and Health and Wellbeing as the two other themes that sit alongside her Being Brave strand. And the values of the MA itself, and its vision for the social impact that museums can have, fit well with her and the library’s core principles of diversity, inclusivity and empowerment. Patrick has also been a tenacious champion of feminism, despite some challenging times.
“There was a period during the late 1990s when feminism really was a dirty word – it wasn’t a good time to be doing a gender specific project,” she says.
How does Patrick define feminism then? She answers immediately: “A feminist is somebody who identifies and understands that there is gender inequality, but, critically, a feminist is somebody who also acts on it. We can’t just grumble about things, let’s do something about it.”
Taking action
Patrick was still a student when she first got involved in the library project.
“The trigger was the lead up to Glasgow being European City of Culture. A bunch of women, including myself, thought that if we don’t do something, the people who’ll be representing Glasgow to the world will be bearded white men, which is what it was like then. So we organised this big festival in 1990 and it was at that point that the idea of the women’s library began to crystallise.”
That activist spirit hasn’t gone away. A recent project has been to inject more women’s history into Glasgow via women’s heritage walks. Neither of the two council devised walking tours included any female influences in them.
“There are hundreds of statues and monuments to men, but only three statues of women in the whole of Glasgow, and only one of them is a Scot, and that was put up by public subscription, not by the city fathers. It’s of a woman called Isabella Elder who set up the first higher education college for women and ran a shipyard here.”
The walk that Patrick and her female comrades have devised celebrates 10 years of the library’s Women Make History scheme to reinterpret history. Another initiative they are running is Collect If, which is about bringing creative BME women together.
“Women of colour aren’t well represented in Scottish arts and culture; they’re not taking positions on boards of museums, they’re not terrifically visible in Scotland, notwithstanding Jackie Kay being our Makar [national poet] of course.”
The library also runs projects with artists, raises awareness about violence against women, and homelessness. It is helping Glasgow’s Burrell Collection reinterpret its collection with female history, and working to conserve the heritage of the Scottish Women’s Aid charity and making an exhibition about it. Glasgow Women’s Library also administers its own archive, the Lesbian Archive, and the surprising addition of the National Museum of Roller Derby archive.
Does the library have an acquisitions budget? No. But the library is blessed with a lot of goodwill, says Patrick.
“Somebody’s just brought in a suffragette-owned umbrella in suffragette colours. It will make a lovely pairing with our umbrella stand that was painted by suffragettes who were incarcerated in Duke Street Prison.”
The suffragettes made a difference then, and Patrick is making a difference now. She is the 2016 Evening Times’ Scotswoman of the Year, but remains modest at every turn.
“I am pleased to say that the feedback we get about the work we do is that it does change people’s lives,” she says. “It’s certainly changed my life.”
She began volunteering and developing Glasgow Women’s Library in 1990, and is now Glasgow Women’s Library’s lifelong learning and creative development manager.
She gained a PhD in feminism, class and ethnicity in 2004 from the University of Stirling.
Patrick recently joined the Museums Galleries Scotland board, and she is also the 2016 Evening Times’ Scotswoman of the Year.
It is the sole Accredited museum dedicated to women’s history in the UK.
The library is run by 25 staff, and works with 100 volunteers.
It supports dedicated participatory and accessible programmes in areas such as improving literacy and tackling hate crime, and works with black and minority-ethnic women, and other groups that many museums have traditionally failed to attract. It holds its own women’s history archive, as well as a lesbian archive.
The library is funded by various bodies, through grants and donations.
The events it runs remain free or very low-cost to maintain accessibility.
The library won the Enterprising Museum of the Year award in 2013-14.
Speaking Out: Recalling Women’s Aid in Scotland, Museum of Edinburgh, 11 November 2016 to 28 January 2017
Patrick founded Glasgow Women’s Library in 1991 off the back of the buzz that came out of the city being European Capital of Culture the year before. She has championed its cause ever since.
“We want women to support each other, talk to each other, mentor each other,” says Patrick, who is the lifelong learning and creative development manager at the library. “We want people whose paths would not normally cross to find each other here in the women’s library.”
This year marks the 25th anniversary of Glasgow Women’s Library, which is far removed from what people might perceive as a traditional library. This is a place of activism, with a packed programme of events, talks, walks and reading groups that all have a social impact of some kind.
“This is one of the hardest, most deprived areas in Europe,” says Patrick of the library’s east Glasgow home, where it moved three years ago. There are lots of unemployed people in the city and there is also a large immigrant population, and Patrick and her colleagues at the library work hard to engage audiences such as this.
“Getting non-English women involved can be tough because of the language barrier, but engaging these women through their migration histories to Scotland has been a really useful tool to get them to talk,” says Patrick. She points to a model that a woman has made of her home in Lahore; rather different to a Glaswegian tenement.
Modest beginnings
The home of Glasgow Women’s Library is now in a striking stone building, but it hasn’t always had such grand settings.
“There was a period where we were in the Tramgate area of the city and to get to our office we had to use an appalling lift,” Patrick recalls. “If you can imagine that a lot of women have to build up the courage to visit us, whether for support, literacy learning, access to our archives or for the library – then they would encounter a really dark lane, have to go up that rickety lift and then see water pouring into the building. I remember witnessing one of my colleagues holding a brolly over her computer. That place was grim.”
Did she ever think about throwing the towel in? “Many, many, many times,” says Patrick, but she never did.
Patrick has been through thick and thin for the library’s cause, living hand to mouth at times, but it’s all led to what she now sees as a golden age. Her tenacity has also stood her in good stead to lead the Being Brave theme of this year’s Museums Association (MA) Conference, which is taking place in Glasgow on 7-9 November.
“I think being bold is a good way of learning,” she says. “If you visualise something strongly enough I believe that it will come true in one way or another. Right now, we are very much a visualisation of some of the ambitious dreams and ideas that we had years ago.”
She’s excited to be involved in the MA Conference, which has People and Places and Health and Wellbeing as the two other themes that sit alongside her Being Brave strand. And the values of the MA itself, and its vision for the social impact that museums can have, fit well with her and the library’s core principles of diversity, inclusivity and empowerment. Patrick has also been a tenacious champion of feminism, despite some challenging times.
“There was a period during the late 1990s when feminism really was a dirty word – it wasn’t a good time to be doing a gender specific project,” she says.
How does Patrick define feminism then? She answers immediately: “A feminist is somebody who identifies and understands that there is gender inequality, but, critically, a feminist is somebody who also acts on it. We can’t just grumble about things, let’s do something about it.”
A feminist is somebody who identifies and understands that there is gender inequality, but, critically, a feminist is somebody who also acts on it"
Taking action
Patrick was still a student when she first got involved in the library project.
“The trigger was the lead up to Glasgow being European City of Culture. A bunch of women, including myself, thought that if we don’t do something, the people who’ll be representing Glasgow to the world will be bearded white men, which is what it was like then. So we organised this big festival in 1990 and it was at that point that the idea of the women’s library began to crystallise.”
That activist spirit hasn’t gone away. A recent project has been to inject more women’s history into Glasgow via women’s heritage walks. Neither of the two council devised walking tours included any female influences in them.
“There are hundreds of statues and monuments to men, but only three statues of women in the whole of Glasgow, and only one of them is a Scot, and that was put up by public subscription, not by the city fathers. It’s of a woman called Isabella Elder who set up the first higher education college for women and ran a shipyard here.”
The walk that Patrick and her female comrades have devised celebrates 10 years of the library’s Women Make History scheme to reinterpret history. Another initiative they are running is Collect If, which is about bringing creative BME women together.
“Women of colour aren’t well represented in Scottish arts and culture; they’re not taking positions on boards of museums, they’re not terrifically visible in Scotland, notwithstanding Jackie Kay being our Makar [national poet] of course.”
The library also runs projects with artists, raises awareness about violence against women, and homelessness. It is helping Glasgow’s Burrell Collection reinterpret its collection with female history, and working to conserve the heritage of the Scottish Women’s Aid charity and making an exhibition about it. Glasgow Women’s Library also administers its own archive, the Lesbian Archive, and the surprising addition of the National Museum of Roller Derby archive.
Does the library have an acquisitions budget? No. But the library is blessed with a lot of goodwill, says Patrick.
“Somebody’s just brought in a suffragette-owned umbrella in suffragette colours. It will make a lovely pairing with our umbrella stand that was painted by suffragettes who were incarcerated in Duke Street Prison.”
The suffragettes made a difference then, and Patrick is making a difference now. She is the 2016 Evening Times’ Scotswoman of the Year, but remains modest at every turn.
“I am pleased to say that the feedback we get about the work we do is that it does change people’s lives,” she says. “It’s certainly changed my life.”
Adele Patrick at a glance
Adele Patrick studied design at Glasgow School of Art and then became a part-time lecturer in the historical and critical studies department, teaching gender, art and culture studies. She began volunteering and developing Glasgow Women’s Library in 1990, and is now Glasgow Women’s Library’s lifelong learning and creative development manager.
She gained a PhD in feminism, class and ethnicity in 2004 from the University of Stirling.
Patrick recently joined the Museums Galleries Scotland board, and she is also the 2016 Evening Times’ Scotswoman of the Year.
Glasgow Women’s Library at a glance
Glasgow Women’s Library has grown from a grassroots project begun in 1991, to a Recognised Collection of National Significance.It is the sole Accredited museum dedicated to women’s history in the UK.
The library is run by 25 staff, and works with 100 volunteers.
It supports dedicated participatory and accessible programmes in areas such as improving literacy and tackling hate crime, and works with black and minority-ethnic women, and other groups that many museums have traditionally failed to attract. It holds its own women’s history archive, as well as a lesbian archive.
The library is funded by various bodies, through grants and donations.
The events it runs remain free or very low-cost to maintain accessibility.
The library won the Enterprising Museum of the Year award in 2013-14.
Speaking Out: Recalling Women’s Aid in Scotland, Museum of Edinburgh, 11 November 2016 to 28 January 2017