Myrtles playday: Ancestors in rugs

The Myrtles are back with an update before their next playday and a sneak peek at some of their work. Here's Diane Cox: The Myrtles are having another Playday this week to work on our individual figures of Cornish women. Here is a pic of mine in progress....she will represent domestic tasks and also several of my husband's female ancestors,all ordinary working class women from the Newlyn area.

I am enjoying how much this project has stimulated my mind, and how I have discovered many little gems of information along the way, and met some wonderful people too!

Inspired by Newlyn ancestors (credit: Diane Cox)

Help us tell our story

History 51 poster (click to download 3.4MB PDF) Now we have got over the euphoria of winning a £10,000 Heritage Lottery grant it is time to start the hard work.

We need volunteers who are interested in contributing to a pioneering and creative project. You don't have to have any particular experience but just have a love of finding out and capturing interesting information on women. Most volunteers will work on the Elizabeth Treffry Collection in Penzance, but we are also looking for others to use collections and resources from elsewhere.

The kind of tasks we need help with are:

  • researching the life stories of women who have lived, worked or come from Cornwall or Scilly
  • photographing and scanning historical documents and artefacts
  • creating art, music, poems or literature inspired by Cornish and Scillonian women
  • work on our social media channels and blog (Twitter, Facebook, YouTube)
  • writing short Wikipedia-style biographies
  • entering information into the Cornish Women's Index (a free online database of words and images)
  • participating in informal and fun workshops scheduled for venues across Cornwall in 2013.

What you will get in return

  • free training
  • a chance to undertake brand new historical research
  • your name next to contributions on the Cornish Women's Index and website
  • VIP guest at the History 51 party in November 2013.

Find out more about the women in your area or your family

Are you doing local or family history research? History 51 could be the project for you. We are looking for local and family historians to contribute new information on historical women they know about.

We would love to hear from you and help you collect and record information about these women.

Please share and display the History 51 poster!

If you think your group or organisation would be interested in History 51, please share and display our poster with them. Clicking on the poster will download a PDF version you can print out.