The curators of an exhibition celebrating the history of the Suffragettes in Camden are urging people to search their attics.
Dr Susan Croft and Irene Cockroft are appealing for help ahead of an exhibition marking 100 years since women gained the right to vote.
Dr Croft said: “This is the key year when we should be celebrating the people who drove the political change we are still benefitting from. It’s really important to honour that history in Camden, which is an amazing borough from that point of view.”
According to Dr Croft and Ms Cockroft, Camden was a “crucial” location in the struggle for women to get the vote with a rich history linked to Suffragettes including Dame Millicent Fawcett, whose home was in Gower Street, as well as little-known activists such as Hampstead’s Henry and Margaret Wynne Nevinson.
But Dr Croft, former senior curator of contemporary performance at the V&A museum, and Ms Cockroft, a specialist in art and the suffrage movement, are looking to raise £8,000 to make sure the show succeeds.
The funds raised will help them collect artefacts, publish an exhibition book, and organise talks, workshops and readings from Suffragette plays.
Camden Council has given Dr Croft and Ms Cockroft a grant to get the event off the ground, but the pair – who co-curated How the Vote Was Won, a 2010 exhibition in Richmond – are keen to raise more to make the show an even greater success.
The co-authors of Art, Theatre and Women’s Suffrage hope people will lend them letters, photos, copies of flyers, suffrage newspapers and memorabilia, including Votes for Women sashes, for the displays.
“It would be great to hear from people whose grandmothers and grandfathers were part of the struggle,” Dr Croft said.
The organisers are also looking for people to help research the history, fundraise, promote the exhibiton on social media and lead groups around the show.
The exhibition – A Stone’s Throw from Westminster: Suffragettes and Other Feminists in Camden – opens in June at Camden Local Studies and Archive Centre in Holborn Library, 32-38 Theobalds Road.
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