Tara Morton, MWS Project Coordinator
Mapping Women’s Suffrage is thrilled to announce that, through Coventry Creates, historian Professor Sarah Richardson from Warwick University has organised a collaboration with the musician and songwriter Verity Pabla and local musical trio the Pips exploring suffrage history through music, inspired by the Mapping Women’s Suffrage project.
Professor Richardson explains: “Music played a fundamental part in the campaigns for women to obtain the right to the parliamentary vote in the early twentieth century. Not just a backdrop or an accompaniment to women’s activism, songs acted as a call to arms and an expression of visionary new citizenship. I’m excited about the potential resonance that music and song will add, not just to the fascinating stories of Coventry women’s suffrage campaigners as related on the project map, but to our understanding of citizenship in the city today’.
The fascinating stories of Coventry women’s suffrage campaigners revealed by the Mapping Women’s Suffrage project will help inspire music led by Verity Pabla; “I am very inspired to be participating in the Mapping Women’s Suffrage research project through Coventry Creates and am more than pleased to be involving a fantastic trio The Pips through my music company ‘I’m Not A Machine’. We’re setting out to write, record and deliver a new piece of music that will emerge from suffrage stories derived from Sarah and Tara Morton’s research.
“With three powerful female singer songwriters in the form of Cat Mctigue, Shanade Morrow, and Rio Hellyer, I couldn’t think of artists that would be more suited to connecting the past with the present and exploring topics that are as important today as they were in 1911.”
Here at Mapping Women’s Suffrage we can’t wait to see and hear the passion of suffrage activists re-interpreted in a song that will resonate with new audiences today. We look forward to sharing the new song with you all as well as digital creations accompanying this exciting new musical collaboration as it unfolds.
You can find out more about the Coventry Creates project here. https://warwick.ac.uk/newsandevents/pressreleases/coventry_creates_local