Art imitating Life

Making an art of social activism

I will not be the first artist to celebrate the life of a person of note, nor will I be the last. While my work may not be a sculpture or an oil painting hung in The National Gallery (yet), my embroidery is still an act of worship.

I also see my embroidery as a form of social activism. By sewing portraits of historical female figures from our recent past, I am seeking to rekindle their names. I want as many people as possible to know Florence Paton and my current subject Helena Brownsword Dowson. I want to raise awareness of these women and others like them who lived locally in my home so that their acts of service will not be forgotten. And without a doubt Helena Dowson deserves to be remembered.

Helena Brownsword Dowson: A Woman of Action

My second portrait in my series celebrating the lives of notable women from Nottinghamshire and the East Midlands is an important figure in regional and national politics: Helena Brownsword Dowson. The fact that she is not a national hero is a shame but not a surprise. I would like to change that. So let’s get to know Helena Dowson a little better:

Helena Brownsword, who preferred to be called Nellie, was born into a middle-class family in 1866 and married William Dowson at the age of 18. Her father chaired the first Women’s Suffrage Board and her mother-in-law was the first honorary secretary of the Nottingham Women’s Suffrage Society. So it is perhaps not a surprise that Nellie became an active part of first wave feminism, the suffrage movement.

A Peaceful Protester

In 1895, Nellie became the secretary for the Nottingham Women’s Suffrage Society and then in 1899 became a member of the executive committee of the National Women’s Suffrage Society. She attended and organised meetings, held fundraising events and took part in peaceful marches to demand equality for women.

Helena was non-militant but despite this, suffered for suffrage. She was pelted with missiles and heckled whilst speaking at a suffrage meeting and took part in the Great Suffrage Pilgrimage by walking to Hyde Park in 1913.

A Women of Letters

Like other women of time, Helena did not have equal access to an education. To give you an example the University of Oxford did not award women degrees until 1920 and the University of Cambridge until 1948. In defiance of these restrictions, she campaigned tirelessly for the equal educational rights for women and later became a member of the Council of University College Nottingham. She was nominated to have a Nottingham University building dedicated to her in 2020.

Justice and Peace

It’s clear Nellie Dowson was a woman who took social action seriously. During WWI she organised various relief activities especially for women who were left as sole carers for their families. She went on to be the first female magistrate in 1920.

If anyone can say they lived a life of service to women, to justice and to equal rights it was Helena Brownsword Dowson and I am proud to include her in my embroidery ‘hall of fame’.

Helena's portrait was exhibited at Standing In This Place exhibition on September 20-25 with other artists's works at the unveiling of a scale model of Rachel Carter’s sculpture. This community-funded sculpture will be placed in Nottingham Centre to commemorate the lives of women working in the Midlands textile mills and those enslaved in the cotton fields of America and the Caribbean.

Celebrate with me as I continue my artistic action to raise awareness of these women whose charitable, political, or social activism made them notable figures in their own time. And I am glad to do my part in recognising them in my time.

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