As a College we are marking the centenary of the right to vote and celebrating its progressive history and commitment to diversity and equality with a year-long celebration of suffrage.
The university we are today is built on colleges founded by two Victorian social pioneers who were committed to education and knowledge and were inspired to bring what these can offer to everyone who might benefit. At the time, this meant Royal Holloway College (founded 1886) and Bedford College (founded 1849) being among the very first colleges in the UK to give women access to higher education, meaning we were founded just over ten years before the formation of the National Union of Women’s Suffrage Societies.
Over the coming months, we will be playing a significant national role in celebrating women's suffrage, bringing to life the legacy of suffrage and the development of democracy.
Vote 100 events taking place on Tuesday 6 February:
- from 9am, join our procession of costumed Drama students who will be proceeding from Egham High Street to Founder's Square where they will then be carrying out a number of interactive performances throughout the afternoon. The afternoon will include an interactive performance in Founder’s Square at 11.15am, another one in the Picture Gallery at 1.15pm and then for the final time at 2.15pm again in Founder’s Square. Look out for the spirits of the suffrage manifesting around campus, and gain a general understanding of the Suffrage Movement, and what many women went through and sacrificed.
- Dr Richard Hawley, Department of Classics, will be hosting a talk on how defiant women shattered the notion that Classics was a male-only subject, in the Exhibition Space from 12-12.30pm. The talk will look into how women of the late 19th and early 20thcenturies were discouraged from the study of Classics, but challenged this through quiet perseverance. Register your attendance.
- During the afternoon we will hold a rosette-making workshop led by our student volunteers. Come and make a rosette and learn more about how suffrage campaigners used badges, ribbons and rosettes as visual indicators of their political stance, in the Davison Building foyer from 1.15-3pm or Tommy's Kitchen at the SU from 3-4pm.
- Christina Herringham used art and her independent wealth to further the suffrage cause. Join PhD student Michaela Jones and curator Laura MacCulloch to explore the suffrage activity of this remarkable woman whose art collection is held by College, from 1.15-2pm, in the Picture Gallery.
- Come to our screening of ‘Suffragette’ which follows the lives and experiences of working mother, Maud Watts (Carey Mulligan) and famous activist Emmeline Pankhurst (Meryl Streep) as they campaign for women’s suffrage. This will be followed by a viewing of Tracy Satchwill’s Hysterical Females, a surrealist film that commemorates the 100thanniversary of the Representation of the People Act. Register your attendance.