Snapping the Stiletto

Campaigning for Equality

The project was run by Essex County Council under the immensely energetic and effective leadership of Project Manager Kayleigh Boyle. Kayleigh aimed to involve as many local groups as possible and to replace gendered stereotypes (like that of the ‘Essex Girl’) with a richer and more complex understanding of what being female in Essex has meant in the past and can mean in the present.

Snapping the Stiletto worked with partner organisations, local volunteers, and creative experts to complete a range of different projects in Colchester, Chelmsford, Manningtree, Clacton, Basildon, Saffron Walden, and Southend between 2020 and 2022. Those involved included (in no particular order): Girl Guides from North East Essex; women from the Colchester Chinese Cultural Society; young women from Basildon; volunteer pandemic diarists and creative writers; Project Ambassadors; artists Sian Fan, Kathleen Dutton, Vicci Button and Alison Tew; author Syd Moore; historian Alison Rowlands; learning resource creators Vicci Button, Kelli Marie Sellwood and Valina Bowman-Burns; partners from Southend Museum, Saffron Walden Museum, the British Science Festival and Eye of Boudica; and the various Colchester-based organisations, historians and actors behind Walk with Purpose.

Sadly, the project funding ran out in 2022, so we have now migrated as much of the project information and content as possible to these University of Essex webpages. Please note that for technical reasons we were unable to move some photos and the audio content on the Diary of the Pandemic Year project to the new webpages. Please note as well that QR codes on the walking trails no longer work; we hope to update some of these in future.

Despite these challenges, we hope that this website will preserve the legacies of the women and communities who contributed time and knowledge towards the project, and that it will inspire future projects on Essex women and Essex women’s history.

Funding

This project was run by Essex County Council and funded by the National Lottery Heritage Fund.