Agency and Advocacy: Locating Women's Grassroots Activism in England and Ireland, 1918 to the present

How can local grassroots women's organisations in Ireland and England, active since the early twentieth century, identify strategies to safeguard survival in the future? How can organisations representing a majority of middle-aged and older women attract new members to diversify and expand? How can they utilise organisational histories to make visible local, national and global activism, informed by the UN Sustainable Development Goals? Can shining a light on the history of local grassroots organisations change academic and public understandings of the women's movement and Anglo-Irish relations over the course of the twentieth century? By bringing scholars, Early Career Researchers (ECRs), and stakeholders from across Ireland and England together in the proposed network we seek to identify new ways forward to tackle these challenges.
The research network comprises of five workshops co-designed by the Principal Investigator (PI) and Co-Investigator (Co-I) and representatives of our three participating women's organisations, the Irish Countrywomen's Association (ICA), the Women's Institutes (WI) and the Soroptimist International Great Britain and Ireland (SIGBI). Workshops are organised around five co-identified themes: legacies, advocacy, grassroots activism, visibility and sustainability. A small pilot study in May/June 2022 funded by LSBU UKRI Participatory Research Allocation 2021/22 and co-designed by the PI, Co-I and the SIGBI Tunbridge Wells Branch, trialled the use of participatory research and informs the co-design of this new international research network.

Three workshops will be in person and two online (including a one day online conference open to a wider audience) to ensure inclusivity and accessibility for network members. Workshop 1 consolidates the use of participatory research by bringing together members of the network Steering Committee (SC) and representatives of our three stakeholder organisations. Here we will confirm the co-design of the subsequent workshops and learn about the rich historical legacy and cross-border interconnections between the ICA, WI and SIGBI. Workshop 2 develops these themes with a one-day conference highlighting the grassroots activism of local women's organisations since 1918 and a training workshop for ECRs and network members on participatory research methodology. Workshop 3 takes an interdisciplinary approach by bringing together experts in history, sociology and material culture with network members to identify the most effective 'repertoires of collective action' for local grassroots women's organisations. Workshop 4 adopts the innovative visual sociological method of photo-elicitation to create space for members of the ICA, WI and SIGBI to share experiences as members of local grassroots women's organisations. Workshop 5 concludes the network with its focus on inclusivity and diversity. Here network members and researchers will co-create strategies to support local grassroots women's organisations to expand and diversify their memberships in order to safeguard their activist futures. Each workshop will be evaluated and responses will inform the design of subsequent workshops.
The network has transformative impact potential. For the ICA, WI and SIGBI the co-produced outcomes can be disseminated among the wider membership. This in turn will enable local actions to be developed to replicate network activities and support future sustainability. Individual organisations can adapt the network's outcomes for their own purposes, thereby avoiding a 'one size fits all' approach. The impact of the network goes beyond the three participating organisations. A wider group of civil society associations can access and utilise the network's activism tool-kit and resources via the LSBU website or on request. Enabling on-going activism of grassroots organisations in this way, the network directly contributes to enriching lives locally, nationally and internationally.