“COME hell or high water, Radnorshire women will be celebrated” – that is the message from organisers of an event to celebrate International Women’s Day, after it was postponed due to bad weather last month.
‘Ordinary Lives, Extraordinary Women’ returns to the stage after snowstorms in March cancelled the original event, organised by the Elan Links Scheme and Community Arts Rhayader and Museum (CARAD).
The event will now be held on Saturday, May 13, at CARAD, in Rhayader. ‘Ordinary Lives, Extraordinary Women’ seeks to shine a spotlight on local women’s stories and features local authors, performers and storytellers, alongside an exhibition about local women’s lives historically.
Cath Allan, director of CARAD, said: “Our society stands on the shoulders of women who have gone before, who have raised their families, cared for their relatives and homes, worked hard and done amazing yet unsung things we want to celebrate.”
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Esther Wakeling, scheme manager of Elan Links, added: “The Elan Links scheme is about securing and celebrating the heritage of the Elan Valley, and that includes the many women who have lived and worked here for millennia.
“We’re proud to share these stories, and those of our local community, to uplift and inspire women everywhere.”
CARAD will welcome five exceptional women to their theatre space in Rhayader to share stories about their lives, and those of other women, on May 13. Local writers Jay Griffiths and Meltem Arikan will be kicking off the event with a Q&A and a reading.
The storyteller priestess Christine Watkins joins us with a tale about the ‘Wild Woman of the Wye’, Angela Jones and artist Kate Green will be sharing songs about navvies, witches and love affairs.
The headline act of the evening is aerial performer and actor Kate Hart, with her performance about the life of trailblazing mountaineer Emmeline Lewis-Lloyd from Elan.
Jimmy Tuti, local mixologist, has designed a cocktail menu for Friday night, May 12, around powerful Powys women of the past, such as ‘Mayor Morgan’, a mocktail named after Gwenllian Morgan, the first female mayor in Wales. Both events are free, but advance booking is recommended.
Alongside the evening events, Aster Woods has curated an exhibition on local women, which will be open from 11am on the Saturday. The exhibition covers themes including women at war, women and work, and rituals of Rhayader and its wise women. Aster has also gathered experiences and stories on what it means to be a woman from local women, which will be shared as part of the exhibition.
This project came about from a perceived lack of information about women in local archives.
Elan Links and CARAD decided to elucidate and elevate the stories of local women, which – though hard to find – do exist between the margins.
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