While hand crafted Suffragette dolls are lauded as creative artefacts of social history, the existence in the National Museum of Wales archive of an anti-Suffragette doll, mutilated by nails and left anonymously on the doorstep of a Gower woman at the height of the suffrage campaign shows how dolls have also been weaponised as objects of intimidation. Dolls have never been exclusively playthings but over the centuries have been made – often by women in domestic settings – as storytellers: observers of and objectors to the limits placed on them because of their gender. When the UK government began to restrict the right of protest in 2020 and 2021, craftivism became a relevant and accessible way to voice an opinion. My protest dolls were ready to take to the street!
2022 – The Covid Pandemic Protest Dolls
The Covid pandemic concentrated my mind on many things which I thought were awry in society so when Heritage Crafts had an exhibition of items made by its Welsh members at Turner House, Penarth , I created a collection of Protest Dolls. In 2022 the Pandemic Protest Dolls made another appearance in the Art Pane Relief windows of The Workers Gallery and my role as a craftivist had begun. Some of the dolls were lent out to celebrate International Women’s Day in 2023.
2023 – The Kinder Scout Dolls
The Pitchfork exhibition at The Workers Gallery in 2023 allowed me to get onto one of my favourite soap boxes – rights of access for walkers and respect for the landscape and environment by everyone, but particularly by big landowners and profit focussed businesses. The these three dolls were made to commemorate the mass trespass of Kinder Scout in April 1932. In February 2025 they were on display again in the International Women’s Day exhibition (Women of Strength) at The Welfare in Ystrad Gynlais.
2025 – Saving Mynydd y Gaer
Whilst accepting that we need to transition to greener, more sustainable power sources it seems wrong that certain parts of the country have more than their fair share of wind turbines, pylons and solar farms – the creeping development of such sites causing intangible losses to people and communities. Mynydd y Gaer, a small area of beautiful wilderness upland in Bridgend County Borough, is currently threatened by an increase in the number of wind turbines which already deface the local landscape. My MA dissertation and the resulting geopoetic mixed media work and research could not have come about with wind turbines swooshing overhead. These Protest Dolls were exhibited in the Art Pane Relief windows of The Workers Gallery in February 2025. You can find more information on saving Mynydd y Gaer here.
