In August last year, the group were awarded a Heritage Lottery Fund (HLF) Sharing Heritage Grant to fund a year-long project entitled Women Making History in West Dunbartonshire.

The aim was to document and preserve local women’s history and highlight its importance.

During this year the women have worked to research and record the social life experiences of West Dunbartonshire’s local women during the 1950s and 60s and have developed a set of educational resources in the form of a Memory Box of artefacts and an A5 booklet, as well as an online Virtual Memory Box accessible via the Glasgow Women’s Library Website.

A launch event was held on Friday, August 21 in the Dumbarton Heritage Centre of Dumbarton Library.

Members showed and explained the items from the Memory Box, which include written memoirs, pictures, and artefacts from their own and other local women’s social life experiences during the 1950s and 60s.

They covered themes like girls playground games, ‘goin to the dancin’, fashion favourites, and shared their experiences of womanhood and birth, and being a ‘housewife’.

These initial workshop sessions took place on August 22 in the Heritage Centre of Dumbarton Library.

The resource will be on display in the form of a drop-in exhibition running until Wednesday, August 26 from 10am–3pm at the Heritage Centre of Dumbarton Library.

Participants from the Women Making History in West Dunbartonshire project were there each day to answer questions.

Following these events the Memory Box and Booklet resources will then be available for use throughout West Dunbartonshire community to provide hands-on workshop experiences within schools, community groups, care homes and day care facilities. To book onto any of the above events please contact Glasgow Women’s Library on 0141 550 2267 or info@womenslibrary.org.uk.