On the top floor of The Red Deer pub, a group of local women meet each month
Vice President Ruth Kirkman, cocktail-maker Hugh Escott and President Lindsay Garfitt at St Matthew's Hall
to have a natter over a pint of beer. They chat about everything from horticulture to crocheting, jam-making to burlesque, oblivious to the shouts of punters downstairs.
The women – who make up the committee of Seven Hills Women’s Institute – certainly don’t fit the typical WI stereotype. With an average age of 33, many of them were just twinkles in their parents’ eyes when Britain’s feminist movement started to make political waves. Itchy hairnets and floral pinafores have been discarded in favour of Topshop jeans and cropped jackets. This is feminism in 2011.
Seven Hills promote themselves as “less jam and Jerusalem, more belly dancing and bellinis” on the group’s online blog. President and co-founder, Lindsay Garfitt, 26, wanted to put a modern twist on the traditional WI set-up. She came up with the idea for Seven Hills after interviewing members of WI groups from Derbyshire for a journalistic feature.
“I always had the stereotypical idea in my head of old ladies,” she tells me. “But when I got talking to the WI women, I could imagine me and my friends doing that. The friendship they all had seemed really nice. I thought it would be great to grow older with a group of like minded women.”
Lindsay wasted no time setting up her own WI group in Sheffield. She spoke to the South Yorkshire Federation for advice and officially launched the group in October 2009 with the help of friends Jennifer Marsden and Kim Whelan. By the beginning of 2010, Seven Hills had already reached its limit of 100 members.
“There was just a real gap in younger women’s lives in Sheffield,” Lindsay reflects. “I think when you get to be in your 20s and 30s and older, it can sometimes be hard to make new female friends.
“If you’ve lost touch with people from school, or if you’ve been away to university, it’s sometimes difficult to meet friends at work who are similar to you. I think people are a bit scared of going to older WI groups because they don’t know what it’s going to be like and whether they’re going to be welcomed.
“Groups like ours help to break those barriers down and help them realise that it’s not so scary.”
Seven Hills attracts a huge range of different people, including young professionals, full-time mums, pensioners and even students. But Lindsay remains modest about the committee’s achievements: “It’s not an established group. Even now, it’s our second year and we don’t really know what we’re doing. We’re taking what WI has been doing for a lot of years and putting a new twist on it.”
Seven Hills committee members Jennifer Marsden, Blanche Duggleby and Victoria Porteous at Sheffield town hall
And with the likes of Cath Kidston, Kirstie Allsop and Nigella Lawson flying the flag for 1950s retro living, kitsch is definitely the new cool.
Committee member Blanche Duggleby, 27, believes that the variety of events Seven Hills offers is the key to its success. Activities range from wine tasting to making the fascinator headpiece that Kate Middleton has made so popular.
Many of the committee members have also launched spin-off groups, such as a book club and a Sunday morning coffee and cake session, to accommodate extra people.
“I like that the activities are different every month because I’ve tried joining clubs before and got bored of them. Whereas with this if you don’t like one activity you can try a different one next month,” says Blanche.
Fellow member Anna Tebble, 30, agrees: “I think it gets you into things you don’t normally do. We’ve got the allotment, we’ve got the walking club, the Sheffield food festival…it all opens doors to lots of things you wouldn’t do by yourself. It’s good for contacts; you meet people you wouldn’t normally meet.”
In many ways, the group is carrying on what other women started in the early 20th century. Yet the Seven Hills women seem hesitant to define themselves as traditional feminists.
Lindsay believes that modern day feminism is instead rooted in the idea of choice. “Most of the people in our group are very strong independent women,” she says. “They may have very high profile jobs, or husbands or boyfriends or girlfriends, but this is something that they want to set aside every month for them. Just because they might be learning to burlesque dance one month, or making jam the next, doesn’t take anything away from them as strong women. I think that’s feminism now for me and for a lot of people in our group.”
Vice President Ruth Kirkman, 29, agrees: “I think the big thing, and I don’t know whether it’s classed as feminism, is just a sense of solidarity and sisterhood.
“In the past, I’d always have a bit of barrier with people, thinking ‘Do they want to be friends?’, whereas with women in the WI there’s an immediate ‘Oh you’re in the WI so you must be alright then’. It’s very inclusive. I think that’s part of the tradition of it and we have embraced that; everyone is welcome.”
Whatever you want to label them, these women are certainly relishing their time together.
Seven Hills WI meets on the third Thursday of each month (except July) at St Matthew’s Hall, Carver Street, Sheffield, from 7.30pm to 9.30pm. Visit www.shwi.co.uk for more information.
Fast Facts: The wonderful world of WI
- The WI celebrated its 95th anniversary in 2010. lIt now has around 205,000 members in 6,500 groups.
- The first WI meeting was held in September 1915 to encourage women in rural communities to produce more food during the First World War.
- In 1924, British composer Sir Walford Davies wrote an arrangement of Hubert Parry’s hymn Jerusalem for WI choirs. It has since become symbolic of women’s suffrage.
- The organisation has its own residential college in Marcham near Oxford.
