Activating the Archive at Glasgow Women’s Library

Glasgow Women’s Library is the only Accredited Museum in the UK dedicated to women’s lives, histories and achievements and is a welcoming and inclusive space. Building on recent research into the feminist potential of women’s diaries, from March to August 2025 artist-researchers explored archival material on site at Glasgow Women’s Library through performance. Using artefacts and sources from the library collection and archive as stimuli for performance making, artists delved into forms of autobiographical storytelling such as diaries and zines, considering these as valuable ways to understand women’s lives. Our research questions were: Who lives on the shelves of Glasgow Women’s Library’s archive? How can performance bring archival material to life? The research process culminated in a life writing workshop and a performance sharing event which included a welcome from GWL, new performances, a film screening, panel event, performative display and audio walk all intended to platform women’s stories and explore life writing as feminist praxis. This co-authored article by some of the artists and curators in the creative team is both a document of the process, and a reflection on the outputs and performances.