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2014 Community History Prize Winner

Community History prizewinner
Maggie Davis of the St Ives Archive (left) and Sophie Bradshaw of the History Press (right)

The Women’s History Network awarded the Community History Prize for the first time this year. It is sponsored by the History Press. Details of the impressive range of shortlisted entrants can be found at: http://www.thehistorypress.co.uk/womens-history-network. It was great to see so many examples of grass-root Women’s History taking place in communities across the country. The shortlist included projects on women who worked in Cambridge Laundries, the use of badges to explore Women’s History and an oral history of a 1960s single mothers’ home in Nottingham. The projects involved drama productions, exhibitions, plays, videos and marches.

See below for runners up but the winner was St Ives Archive with their project on the textile industries of St Ives where women made dresses for the silk garment factory Crysede and for John Lewis and Berketex.  The judges were very impressed that not only was the project inspired by a member of the public, but it also brought together a wide range of different researchers and resources from the community and shed light on a group of women workers who were truly hidden from history. The careful documentation of the research and Youtube video https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LuSXHRQ1m9k were organized to ensure that the research has a legacy and will be able to be accessed by others interested in this fascinating area of history in the future.

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Runners up

The following projects were highly commended.

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