Rye News readers may remember the HerStory of Rye calendars published last year as a fundraiser for Rebekah Gilbert’s mayoral charities when she was the mayor of Rye during the pandemic. Encouraged by the interest in this calendar, three local women have since raised funding from the Heritage Lottery Fund, in partnership with Rye Heritage Centre, to amplify this photographic celebration of women working in Rye in the 2020s.
The HerStory of Rye is a modern living online archive including over fifty oral histories and one hundred and fifteen portraits. An exhibition of the project will be launched in the Heritage Centre in Strand Quay on July 21. Visitors to Rye in July and August will see many HerStory portraits sited in and around town. The project organisers will be announcing plans for including more women and oral histories to add to this archive on an annual basis. Many women have not yet been included simply because of lack of sufficient time and people available to record them all.
The HerStory picnic on Tilling Green, is our way of offering thanks to our brilliant website designer and all the volunteers, oral historians and interviewees who have worked together to make this project possible to date. We are inviting friends and families on this occasion to bring their family photographic albums, to share tea, cake and stories about the working lives in Rye of their mothers, grandmothers, aunts, and sisters. Please do save the date and join us on July 8 from 2pm to 5pm in Tilling Green.
Image Credits: Susan Benn .