Beeston Civic Society launches NEW CAMPAIGN: Lady Plaques !

The area covered by Beeston and District Civic Society has a very healthy population of more than thirty blue plaques. These immediately recognisable, circular blue plaques were installed by the South Broxtowe Blue Plaques scheme to commemorate eminent locals and events. However, none of these plaques is dedicated to a woman.

To commemorate its 50th Anniversary, and on International Women’s Day, Beeston Civic Society launches a campaign, called ‘Lady Plaques’, through which it seeks to celebrate historical local women, with plaques of their own. Red ones!

Public nominations are essential to the work of any plaque scheme, and Lady Plaques is no exception. Tamar Feast (trustee leading the campaign), said,

“History is famously written by the victors, and unfortunately they’re pretty much always men. Women in local history are rarely highlighted; often combined into an homogenous lump ‘Women of Nottingham’ or ‘Women in Beeston’ with barely a paragraph to their name… which turns out to be their husband’s name anyway.”

Owing to poor documentation of womens’ lives throughout history, with evidence and records scarcer and harder to find, the help of local historians, residents, and family stories will be crucial to the success of the scheme and their search to find women who lived, worked and quietly achieved things in the local area,

“Add to all this that women in our society, historically, were permitted to do so little in terms of achievement beyond the doorstep or the nursery and you’ve quite a job on your hands finding a woman documented in anything – you must really want to look! But the Civic Society really wants to look. We know there were smart, brave, exceptional women in our town – as well as many women whose stories form the fabric of our community history for other reasons. We want to write them into history – she lived here. She had a name.”

The Society already have a handful of potential candidates, including pioneers in health, social welfare, and humanitarian causes. But if there’s a historical woman from Beeston, Chilwell, Attenborough, Bramcote or Toton who you think there should be a plaque for, they want to hear about her. 

A volunteer panel will convene annually to consider the nominations received. Any which are seen as eligible will then be progressed further with property owners consent obtained and more detailed research undertaken.

Full details, criteria, and a nomination form are on their website. If you would like to help support the project in other ways, such as sponsorship, research, fundraising or being on the panel, you can get in touch directly with the campaign by email, social media or via their website.

Campaign webpage:
beestoncivicsociety.org.uk/ladyplaques

Criteria:

beestoncivicsociety.org.uk/ladyplaques/criteria

Contact email:

ladyplaques.beestoncivicsoc@gmail.com

Social media: Search, or use #LadyPlaques