Women in Shipbuilding Exhibition
This exhibition brings together photographs of women in shipbuilding and marine engineering in north east England in the First World War. We hope the exhibition will encourage people to help tell the story of these women and others like them by sharing their own photographs, stories and memorabilia.
If you have stories or would like to get in touch, please email hec.info@lrfoundation.org.uk.
The exhibition will be on display at The Common Room, Neville Hall, Westgate Road, Newcastle upon Tyne, NE1 1SE between the 12th February and 6th March 2024. Open 10am-4pm Monday-Friday. FREE ENTRY.
To mark International Women's Day and British Science Week, the exhibition will later be displayed at Newcastle High School for Girls.
The Women in Shipbuilding is a project led by Historic England, funded by Lloyds Register Foundation as part of the Rewriting Women into Maritime History initiative. Our project partners are the Women’s Engineering Society (WES), the Imperial War Museums (IWM) and Newcastle University Oral History Unit and Collective. We are also collaborating with Remembering the Past, North Tyneside Council, and North Tyneside Art Studio.
The project will help boost awareness of the role that women played in shipbuilding and marine engineering in north east England during the First World War, which we hope will encourage women's careers in marine engineering today and in future.
Explore the Women in Shipbuilding Digital Exhibition:
Gallery 1: Imperial War Museum Photograph Collection
Gallery 2: Imperial War Museum Photograph Collection
Gallery 3: Imperial War Museum Photograph Collection
Gallery 4: Imperial War Museum Photograph Collection
Gallery 5: Imperial War Museum Photograph Collection
Gallery 6: Historic England Aerial Photography
Overview of Historic England Grant
The Women in Shipbuilding grant with Historic England aims to address the challenge of the lack of recognition of the role that women have played in maritime sectors in the past, which undermines their entry and advancement in maritime sectors in the present. The project will bring together photographs from the First World War of women in shipbuilding and marine engineering in north east England to create a public exhibition on Tyneside, supported by a media release, social media and online content. The exhibition will be accompanied by request for people to get in touch with family/community photographs, documents, memorabilia, and stories of women in shipbuilding; this material will be recorded and curated.
The project will boost awareness of the role that women played in shipbuilding and marine engineering in north east England during the First World War, which will encourage women's careers in marine engineering in future.
The objectives of the project:
- To create a public exhibition on Tyneside supported by a media release, social media and online content
- To encourage and facilitate people getting in touch with family/community photographs, documents, memorabilia and stories of women in shipbuilding
- To boost appreciation of the connection between community history, places, archives and marine heritage
- To create a structured, curated, and publicly accessible resource from this newly captured material.
- To learn from the project as a possible model for using public history to engage people in other aspects of women in maritime sectors in the UK and globally.
Impact
- Advancing public education within the transportation industries and related engineering and technological disciplines, principally by increasing public knowledge of the important role that women played in shipbuilding and marine engineering in the early 20th century.
- Learning from the past: raising awareness of the role of women in shipbuilding and engineering in the past to support greater diversity in the workforce today and in future.
- Skills for Safety: encouraging women to embark upon, transfer or return to careers in marine engineering inspired by greater awareness of the role that women have played in this sector in the past.
Explore the Women in Shipbuilding Digital Exhibition
Image: Female workers shovel sand to form an embankment at a shipbuilding yard. © Crown copyright. IWM Q 20142