What are your WISHes for women’s health?

These are some of the zine pages created at the workshop held as part of our Women’s Health in Scotland pilot events in Spring 2024:

• An image of demolition in Edinburgh, rubble with crumbling buildings around the edges – ‘We Need Change” scrawled across it in red. 
• A textured drawing of a fire in a hearth, calling for “warmth.”
• A woman in a shirtwaist dress from the 1960s sitting at a bar, holding a large chalice out of which flow words like ‘community,’ ‘celebration’, and ‘dignity’ – “Fill Her Cup”, the page proclaims. 

These are some of the zine pages created at the workshop held as part of our Women’s Health in Scotland pilot events in Spring 2024. Zines are self-published activist magazines that were popular in many activist movements, including the feminist movement from the 1970s to today. Zines remain a great way to get people from different backgrounds creating a vision together. Photos from Edinburgh’s history over the past century were scattered across the tables, along with colored markers and papers, scissors and glue. Around the tables were seated a dozen people imagining the past, present, and future of women’s healthcare. 

Pilot event details

This series of pilot events was a collaboration between University of Edinburgh researchers, Dr Karissa Patton (an historian) and Dr Andrea Ford (an anthropologist) at the Centre for Biomedicine, Self and Society, and public history experts Heather Robertson and Naomi Lawson at the Wee Museum of Memory in Leith’s Ocean Terminal. The Wee Museum of Memory houses historical artifacts, photos, documents and recorded memories, gathered and curated by The Living Memory Association’s (THELMA) decades of co-designed public history projects in Edinburgh. Heather and Naomi’s expertise in running these workshops was essential to the pilot program’s success.

History of women’s health in Scotland

What is women’s health? It seems obvious, but it isn’t. Across the past century, women’s health in Scotland has changed from being primarily about maternity to being more about women’s everyday experience.  Scotland has a rich history of women’s health, that is both part of and distinct from broader histories of women’s health in the United Kingdom. Innovative health services and local activism has shaped Scottish women’s health history. How do these histories influence present day lived experiences? How will the past and present shape the futures of women’s health? 

Marginalised genders, including trans and non-binary people, are starting to be included. Rather than seeing women’s health as something niche, we are beginning to view it as central to healthy societies and medical science. We have come a long way, and we have a long way to go.

Workshop design

The pilot events involved a reminiscence workshop with older women, building on THELMA’s sustained connections with the local 60+ community, alongside similarly structured discussion group workshops for an intergenerational audience. THELMA has built community engagement and community co-design approaches to gathering historical materials and stories since the 1980s. Taking the lead from THELMA reminiscence group approach, these pilot discussion workshops placed people with lived experience as the experts in the room and used prompts from historical and contemporary items and images to explore lived experiences.

We quickly noticed the values of holding space for conversations about women’s health - past and present - as we witnessed camaraderie building across age and nationality and the permission to discuss often “private” topics. The act of sharing experience in these intergenerational spaces sparked conversations about wishes for women’s health too. Indirectly, these intergenerational groups mapped their ideal futures for women’s health. 

Outcomes

In addition, we hosted a talk by local GPs about how to get the most out of women’s healthcare services, at which we learned a lot about the strain the NHS is under. Between the GPs, service user attendees, and hosts, we decided to create a letter writing station at the Wee Museum of Memory to share why the NHS matters and needs funding with local government officials.  

And, of course, the series involved the zine workshop! The 24-page zines were created with the facilitation of Kiersten Hay, and printed in an environmentally friendly riso style. Copies of zines are available at the Wee Museum of Memory - stop in and say hi! 

As a result of this pilot series, we created a new acronym for our group: WISH, for ‘Women In Scotland’s Health.’ We intend to apply for more funding to expand into other areas within Edinburgh and Scotland, connect with other community organizations, and develop digital infrastructure like a logo, website, and email list, all building towards a co-created community exhibit and shared space for envisioning the past, present, and future of women’s health and healthcare. We look forward to seeing where this project takes us!

If you want to be involved or kept informed about future events, please email Karissa Patton or Andrea Ford (opens in new window).