SWI Heritage Project awarded grant by The National Lottery Heritage Fund
Scottish Women’s Institutes (SWI) is announcing a £127,175 grant from The National Lottery Heritage Fund to protect and conserve its nationally significant archive and collection and secure it for future generations to learn from and be inspired by.
The SWI collection and archive is an unrivalled record of women’s role in Scotland’s society for the past century and more, illustrating their place at the heart of Scottish communities, their emerging voice and decision-making skills, and their key part in keeping Scottish crafting and cultural traditions alive. Without this funding from the Heritage Fund, the collection could be lost forever, and fascinating stories key to Scotland’s history would remain unheard.
The funding will support work required to conserve thousands of items in SWI’s care including exquisite, handcrafted items, documents illustrating how women made decisions previously considered a man’s domain, photographs and Royal correspondence. It will also enable the SWI to provide volunteers with training to collect a series of oral histories from current members to ensure recent history from our communities across Scotland is preserved. These will be released as podcasts on a new SWI website in 2025.
As the SWI was established in 1917 by suffragette Catherine Blair with the motto ‘If you know a good thing, pass it on’, the SWI is also partnering with The Young Women’s Movement to offer intergenerational skills-sharing workshops with heritage crafting at their core. Third sector knowledge sharing will help others learn from the experience, too.
Over the next two years, volunteers and groups around the country will be able to take part in the project through events and training opportunities, allowing even more people to hear the often-unheard voices of rural women and play a part in bringing women of Scotland’s heritage to light.
The SWI Heritage Project ‘Preserving the Past to Inspire the Future’ is part of a major transformation by the SWI which is as culturally relevant now as it was in the past and last year saw 3% growth in membership for the first time in decades. The exciting work to protect the heritage is being carried out in preparation for the SWI’s collection and archive to be housed in a new Visitor Learning Centre on The Crichton Estate, Dumfries, in 2027.
Working in collaborative partnership with The Crichton Trust and a team of award-winning architects from O’DonnellBrown Architects and White Arkitekter a beautiful, innovative and sustainable building is planned. It will act as a vibrant hub offering exhibitions of the SWI’s and The Crichton’s collections, and important archives, plus a dynamic range of courses, workshops and classes, so will enable the SWI to continue to offer lifelong learning, and opportunities for fun and friendships.
In the long-term, the project will build the skills of SWI’s volunteers, strengthen the network of groups and organisations working together for the benefit of communities across the country and raise public awareness of the importance of women in Scotland and the important role the SWI played as the largest women’s movement in Scotland.
The SWI will be running events throughout the project, visit
www.theswi.org.uk to find one near you.
Mary Burney, SWI’s National President said: “We are thrilled to have received this support from The National Lottery Heritage Fund. Thanks to National Lottery players the nationally significant items in SWI’s care will be saved for future generations to be inspired by and the important role women have played in Scottish society will not go unnoticed.”
