Women's Centres

[secondwaver]

Love to hear what you all think about Women's Centres. Do you remember when there were lots of them? Did you use them?? Do you have a Women's Centre near you? What does it provide? Would you like to see more Women's Centres? What sorts of activity would you like to see happening there?? Looking forward to hearing all your thoughts Wendy

Isn't the Pankhurst Centre if not the first, but one of the few women's centres that have managed to get hold of a building that has a multipurpose use for women. www.pankhursttrust.org/pankhurst-centre

There is also Tindel Manor (building in Featherstone Street) and Crossroads Women's Centre crossroadswomen.net/wp-content/uploads/2020/03/Our-story-060320.pdf

This thread has also made me remember that when a few buildings were given over to help create a women's space they haven't always survived. Look at the amount of money spent on the Women's Library building in east London, and some how that all fell apart. As did Wesley house.

Leeds Spinners women might be able to advise you. They make the
Wrong Side of History, My Arse T shirts.

Hi "I want to retire". I dont know much about the Pankhurst building apart from the name. Will look into that .. thanks!! I do know about Tindlemanor. That building was one of the ones owned by the GLC and very hastily handed over to the groups within them by Ken Livingstone when Thatcher abolished the GLC. I was on the Board of Directors of Tindlemanor when I was director of Women's Design Service in the early 2000s. The arrangement made by Livingstone was an off the peg private company, quite unsuitable to opening the building up to women in general. I did try when I was there to get a more appropriate arrangement going, but the other shareholders were resistant. Strangely WDS is still a shareholder despite having become dormant through lack of funding a while back :-( and no longer occupying any part of the building. Basically it is a building occupied by various women's charities as offices .... not quite the vision of Rooms of our Own!!

Oh and I take your point about not surviving ..... which is why the idea of getting a "free" centre owned in perpetuity paid for by the housing. Then we would seek some anchor tenants to give stability to the enterprise.