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Glasgow Womens Library 4.16 edit.mp3

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Dr Maud Bracke(MB) Changing the World one book at a time. The story of Glasgow Women's
Library. I would like to talk about some aspects of the history and significance of a particular
phenomenon, women's libraries and women's book shops or feminist libraries and feminist book
shops, and to do so I'm joined by Doctor Adele Patrick. One of the founders of Glasgow Women's
Library in 1991 and who has worked for the organization continuously since then. Today, she is
creative development manager and my first question for Adele would be the following. Adele
Glasgow Women’s Library has a remarkable trajectory from very humble beginnings as an unfunded
activist initiative when it opened it stores in the Garnet Hill area of Glasgow, to its status today as
Multi award winning national organization, the only accredited museum dedicated to women's
history in the whole of the UK and a designated recognized collection of national significance. But it
has always been and continues to be a community organization. One that plays a unique role in
Glasgow, Scotland and beyond and is shaped by the feminist passion and commitment of its staff
and volunteers. So, I wanted to start Adele by asking a simple but but question. So how in your view
and in Glasgow Women's Library view, can culture change the world, how do we change people's
minds, habits, life choices as a cultural institution.

Dr Adele Patrick (AP) Yes, that is a very big question Maud, but one that I feel I still feel very excited
by and mobilized by. That's a long history now, we're coming up to three decades, so it's good to
sort of reflect and check in with this question about the agency of the organization, its relevance.
But I think what you're asking there is about how creativity, how culture can play a part in the
change, making agendas, that sort of characterize, really, I suppose, would call it an equalities
agenda? I think during the past few months I've been reminded again about how this is not
something that is sort of part of the groupthink of an organization like our own. We can see in the
ways that people have responded to. For example, civic statues. That that actually symbolic
representations of power are part of an understanding that feminism has been grappling with for 40
or 50 years, if not longer. Certainly, we know that the suffragettes enacted acts of, you know
terrorism one might say in terms of slashing paintings and so on and so forth. We are not in the
business of doing that, but we are really appreciating throughout our history throughout the
organization's history, how we have got a part to play in using cultural, and creative references,
challenging, making interventions to throw up other countercultural sort of views about what
culture might be almost like imagining envisioning alternative futures and contesting ideas about the
past. So, I know that Adrienne Maree Brown has been writing really interesting ideas about how
maybe the visions of the future are ones that have been created not by ourselves. But what we're
finding in the institutional frameworks are the representations of visions that we really do need to
contest, that there ill-fitting for so many of us. And I suppose that that is meant that we have wants
to create both a cultural site. So spaces where we could contest views of the features of the visions
of the past. Not just a question of retrofitting and adding women and men mixing, but actually a very
nuanced way of thinking about how history might be reimagined or rethought, but also almost giving
a, providing a Crucible for the creation of new works, new visions, new perspectives of lives lived
perspectives on the world and I'm still committed to the idea of involving creatives in that process
so that we can have, get away from these limited representations of history life and indeed,
nationhood, or you know what being European might be, what being a global citizen might be?

(MB) That's absolutely fascinating. And also, I mean, I'm, just thinking about the kind of range. The
really very rich range of activities that Glasgow Women's library has been involved in over the years
and the kind of portfolio it has built up, which involves really diverse things from the library
collection itself, from the archive collection itself to exhibitions out of literacy programmes wider
outreach initiatives such ss for example, women's heritage walks in Glasgow. When you look at this
whole portfolio of activities would you say is there any of these that is kind of really more important
or has been more important in kind of in materializing this agenda of changing the world through
culture or would you say that all these activities are interlinked and have sort of contributed to that
agenda?

(AP) I think that what we're striving for is to centre the person approaching the women's library and
their incredibly complex needs. So, I think what we might see in the mainstream sector to a degree is
both a siloing of the activities within the institutions themselves, but also a perception of
assumptions made about what the public, what communities, what women, what others might want
to access and I've always felt like we have a very huge aspiration for the woman who was at the
library and the idea that literacy learner. I was struck by this when we first started doing this this
literacy work, maybe two decades ago now, that was a new field for us, and when I was looking at
the literacy offer, the assumption was that somebody who has been challenged by literacy or
numeracy, that the aspiration for her might be that she aspires to write a shopping list, or she
aspires to work with her children on homework, and I think our aspiration for her is whatever she,
the world is her oyster, so that she might be somebody who might be interested. as some of our
learners have done, our literacy learners in selecting independent film makers and or programming
things or working in the archive or, that really, why should our aspirations for them be different from
the aspirations that we might have for ourselves? Or you know that really, that cross cutting agenda
is characterized both in the way that we operate in the way that we work together as colleagues. So
again, thinking about mainstream institutions often widened access or education in terms of
museums and archives and so on can be a sort of add on that is not high status within the institution.
So, over the past, wee whille, we've been trying to really resist siloing within our work and in some
of the project working that we're doing. For example, the March of Women projects in 2016 or the
21 revolutions project that marks our 25th anniversary and actually in our origin story as well. I think
that maybe we've been at advantage from not having collections professionals working in the
organization for the first 10 years or so, but it was very much grounded in what the user, the visitor,
the Inquirer needs to find trying to find as many pathways to the collections as possible.

(MB) That's really interesting what you said about resisting siloing of your work and it reminds me of
a few things in relation to the earlier history also of Glasgow women's library. So just to go kind of
back to that question of the earlier history of the institution and so I mean Glasgow Women's Library
really emerging initially as a very small grassroots activists project really is very clear example of a
much wider international phenomenon of feminist bookshops or women's libraries emerging on the
back of the women's liberation movement in a number of countries. And I think there's international
connections or models were quite important to you early on, so there's that. And then I think at the
same time quite early on Glasgow Women's library has also aimed to professionalize in its services
and in what it does, and we need to become an established instant cultural institution. So, I mean,
there might be a tension there. So, I would like to ask you, I mean professionalisation in that sense,
what does that mean to you? Or what has it meant over the years? And what has the organization
had to professionalize its various activities?
(AP) Yes, you're right, Maud. I think that it's a very interesting historical trajectory. If we think about
the origin of the Women's Library in 1991. In the lead up to that, we were being influenced ourselves
by models not of mainstream institutions, and almost like having a, trying to model ourselves on our
big sister organisations that were the Nationals or even a Public Library or other existing mainstream
provisions and almost like doing that adding women and mixed type of formula. What we're more
interested in, and very, very influenced by was the proliferation of a European model of women's
libraries, archives, museums that were seeing in Berlin and Frankfurt and Hamburg, and also sort of
lots of American models as well, like the Women's building. So there were already a raft of really
interesting countercultural models, Interestingly, frequently founded by artists and I again back to
your point about culture and creativity, I think that that is a way that our work has evolved using the
agency of artists, seeking the feedback of artists to sort of almost like checking on our relevance, but
your point about professionalization, I think that having rooted ourselves over the first decade in
almost like checking in with ourselves in this sort of feminist organizing, I think then we felt
confident because I think that we need that wanted to keep the space going. We wanted to remain
plural in our reference points. But inevitably we did understand that our professional colleagues
collections colleagues had much to learn there. But thinking about that 30-year period where, for
example, I think we started the year that the Internet started. How this evolution that the
professional counterparts our mainstream counterparts have not stood still either that what we've
notice is that as we were gradually taking on board professional skills as it were in recruiting from
the collections professional bodies or from with colleagues who had academic qualifications, that
our counterparts were actually looking at ways that they could move from a focus on texts and
objects to actually thinking about audiences, widening access and so on and so forth. So I think we
reached a sweet spot maybe about 5 or so years ago, where the conversations became really, really
interesting and productive with the big sister organisations. with the Nationals, with some of our as
it were, mainstream partners who were looking to us, it recognized that we had something to share
in terms of having an influencing and change making role. So that has continued and I can see the
way that some, for example, young women who are accessing the women's library as radical
feminists, or as lesbian feminists, or as sort of people interested in intersectional feminist thinking,
as students are now within those mainstream institutions. But by the same token, we've been really
keen to try not to move away from, as it were, being the community, it's not just that we were
always working for the community and we ourselves as women. As you know, I lived locally to the
library. You know that we are still the community, you know, we still are challenged by intersectional
issues that are barriers for us as individuals so there's never been a sense where we are now
professionals and the communities out there. We are still of the community. But I think for all those
reasons, it's been a revolutionary period in the proliferation of countercultural institutions setting
up, but there's been a revolution within, as it were the mainstream sector as well, but it's led to this
really interesting point in history where museums, archives, and libraries are really challenging, been
challenged on their relevance and look into organisations like us to sort of like speak to that.

(MB) I think that's absolutely fascinating ideal. I really like the your insights there in terms of how
organisations like GWL with a particular ethos which come from a particular trajectory of particular
place in particular politics have also really been able to influence and influence more mainstream
institutions and some of the bigger institutions in that some of your practices have perhaps filtered
through perhaps, often in subtle ways, but have filtered through some of these more mainstream
cultural space. So that's really interesting, but I wanted to come back on something you touched on
very quickly just now. Which is diversity and the diversity of women's lives. Of course, I mean the
diversity of women's lives. In terms of background, in terms of educational background in terms of
cultural background and so on and so forth, and so a lot of this of course, nowadays is articulated in
terms of intersectional feminism, so I wanted to, well, there's just two questions, really. One is about
how would you tackle that? How have you tackled that diversity? How have you tackled, or how?
What does that intersectional approach mean to you? But then also in relation to that? What does
leadership mean to you in that sense? Because I know you've been working in recent years. You've
been thinking and working around, intersectional, feminist leadership, so those two aspects, the
intersectional aspect, but also the leadership aspect of that? What does that mean in your practice
and in your thinking?

(AP) Yes, I think that again, thinking about the way that the organization has developed. So when I
mentioned that, maybe I didn't mention, I should mention that for the first 10 years we were a
volunteer led organization, and I think it's significant that when we did start, as it were,
professionalize and recruit, that the first raft of people employed by the organization where black
and minority ethnic development worker, adult literacy, numeracy development worker and the
very first staff were lesbian peer support youth project workers and I think that that's highly unusual
for a museum and archive library, for the very first people to be employed to be employed as it
were, looking at intersectional modes of engagement, and that the last people to be employed in
the organization where collections professionals and that seems to be like the, almost like the
absolute opposite of the way that most institutions work. So, to the degree to which this sort of
thinking about intersectional ways of working, it's almost like pool that we are swimming in all the
time, that's not a, it's not something that has been adopted in a performative way by the
organization recently, that is something that that possibly we could say that some organisations are
coming to it. In that type of reading, things responded things, and it's a reactive way. I think that is
something that is part and parcel of the way that we've been trying to think through things over the
years and so for example, the covid challenge that we're trying to think through that in an
intersectional way. So that we're thinking, we're not for example, thinking, oh everything has to be
on digital. Let's keep people on the digital as much as possible. We're thinking, how might we think
about the digital, but in an area where we don't want to encourage women to stay on, we want
them to sort of come on, feel something and then go and do something else that is in the real world
with others. Or it might be recognizing that neurodiversity is having an impact in the different
messages that people might be getting from government. And how could we be even more clear in
our communications in order to not add to the things that might be going on in people's lives? Also, I
think that the idea of how could we articulate in our we call them PAG document so we've got
guiding principles that have been arrived at with the whole staff. So everybody in the organization is
impacted by them. So how could we involve others and take on board things like the different ways
that racism can be impacting on women who we work with, volunteers, our staff and board and our
users. So yeah, I suppose I want to speak there about it being sort of almost like a, the mode of the
way that we work, generally in terms of this said leadership area, it is something as you say, that I've
been very cautiously exploring because this term feminist leadership might seem like a contradiction
in terms. It might seem like something that is indicative of the tyranny of structurelessness for some.
Or it might be something that is like something that sounds like an organization that's being Co-
opted into quite negative ways of thinking about how an organization might develop, but I suppose
what I've felt is that there's a there is a sort of, there are forms of leadership happening in our
organization, certainly not just modelled by myself, but forms of leadership that I've been saying
over the last wee period of time where the adult literacy numeracy team have been stepping up and
thinking about the digital divide in new ways and or where the volunteer coordinator has been doing
incredible work, or our admin saying we've been thinking about ways of communicating and in such
incredible ways or the creative clusters that we have in our organization have been leading in
climate change thinking through this process, so I suppose what I thought I might do is publish online
in the early covid period. What I’m demanding of myself in this period and I took over for the first
time the Twitter feed in the library for a day and try to sort of share what my feminist leadership and
as it were, eldership approach might be. So a couple of the things that I wanted to sort of speak
about in that period is the fact that I feel that very many people are well, maybe modelling feminist
leadership but are reticent to site is that, and that I think that feminism has had a great deal to offer
to the equality, diversity and inclusion type of work that's taking place in institutions, but are not
naming it as feminist, and I think that there is, we have to say that over the last 40 years or so people
have been working in this field and that I think it's important to acknowledge that that's been
feminist labor and feminist thinking. And so for that reason, I really want to sort of like say I am
involved in feminist leadership to the degree that I'm leading this organization and also honouring
and citing and bringing to the fore other elders and appreciating how I can learn from the anger,
honesty, kindness of women nonbinary and trans people of all ages. But also I want to really centre
the fact that I am appreciating black and brown women and women from the global South, who
from my perspective are and having done this research seems to me to be in the Vanguard of
understanding and modelling feminist leadership, so I don't see white women really being in the
vanguard of speaking about feminist leadership. I see lots of white women doing brilliant feminist
work, but in terms of looking at where the definitions of feminist leadership are, I see those
emerging from the global South, and I see black and brown women really stepping up in terms of
being sectional leadership. I was just reflecting on my bibliography and reflecting on the podcasts
that I’ve been listening too, the organisations that I’m seeing doing brilliant work and actually they
are in the global South often, or they are in Kenya or they are in Brazil. And I’m also seeing the
leadership text coming forward. You know Sara Ahmed, Adrienne Maree Brown and in the past
Audre Lorde. And actually, seeing that being black feminist work. And that has been important for
me trying to situate where I am and if I have got a leadership role I want to be promoting and
centring the women who I feel are doing amazing work there.