Women Named on Blue Plaques in the Wakefield District

Welcome to the Forgotten Women of Wakefield project. Led by Dream Time Creative, this grassroots project is working tirelessly to unearth stories of women erased from our city’s history and to celebrate their achievements in the form of ensuring Blue Plaque Parity and creative upskilling of the local community.

ANNOUNCING!

FWW and DTC Receive Community Research Grant!

‘We are absolutely delighted to have been successful in our application to Historic England for their community research grant scheme and look forward to collaborating further with our partners, the Wakefield District Sight Aid, to produce research to a standard that may enable us to qualify for a blue plaque for these two extra ordinary women.

Community Research Grants | National Blue Plaque Scheme | Historic England

Press

Forgotten Women of Wakefield projects bags Historic England funding for research to pave way for Edith Wright and Emily Esther Fennell blue plaque

FWW and DTC Win Community Archive and Heritage Group of the Year 2023!

We are BEYOND delighted to announce that we are the winners of this year’s National Community Archives and Heritage Award in the ‘Gathering & Preserving’ category AND also the OVERALL winner across all categories in UK and Ireland.

This is the equivalent of ‘THE OSCARS’ of the HERITAGE WORLD and a huge achievement. Proud. We are.

We were unable to make it to London today for the actual award ceremony so Sarah, CEO of Dream Time Creative and the powerhouse project manager behind the FWW campaign, was able to put together an acceptance speech and presentation which you can view below:

And here is a very special video from a recent Awards Day held at St John’s Square where members of the project past and present gathered to talk about the wonderful things they have experienced as part of the project, all filmed by Kirklees Local Television:

We have now achieved Blue Plaque Parity in the city, but our CEO has also warned that a lack of national funding means that women’s stories are in danger of not being heard. Read the Wakefield Express article below:

Forgotten Women of Wakefield project achieves blue plaque parity for city amid funding concerns

FWW and DTC Recognised in the national "Who Do You Think You Are?" magazine!

Other Recent Projects!

FWW's Exposé On Charles Wateron and Petticoat Patrimony

This past 16 months has been the most challenging, exhilarating and rewarding for the Dream Time Creative research and writer team.

We have, thanks to a grant from #NationalLotteryHeritageFund, given some radical workshops which challenged the perceptions of Charles Waterton BECAUSE we looked at the herstories of the women in his life, the Edmonstone sisters.

Here, in a series of 8 articles, written by Sarah Leah Cobham based on research by Helga Fox, Sarah Cobham, Catherine Clarke, Zainab Jode, M Sharon Kabanda, Abibat Olulode, we show that Charles Waterton did, in fact, value and perpetuate the slave trade and provided the words saying so for a piece of silver presented to his friend Charles Edmonstone. The sisters, Eliza, Anne-Mary, Helen and Bethia were born into one of the most violent and bloody times of the British occupation of British Guiana, and their father, was at the heart of it. Their stories deserve to be told, and that is what we are doing:

Petticoat Patrimony: The Edmonstone sisters.

The Louisa Fennell Trail in Multiple Languages!

This vital project, designed to celebrate not only the life and achievements of Louisa Fennell but also the multi-cultural, diverse and vibrant community in Wakefield that enjoy the legacy of her artwork, honours 6 different languages and makes our city’s history and heritage accessible to all.

Find out more here!