Derry Shirt Factory Workers Oral History Project (2006-14)
Left to right, Harriet Hippsley, Louise Walsh, Chris McGeady and Lizzie Strain in Pilot’s Row Sewing Rooms, Derry in 2013. Photo by Jim (Hawkes) Collins
Left to right: Donna Porter, Jeann Barr, Hazel Rutherford and Anne Doherty
Left to right: Greta Matthews, Eithne Glackin, Helen Morrisson, Kathleen Tracey and Ronnie Simpson
Left to right: Deirdre O’ Kane, Mary Mc Callion, Margaret Mcgonagle, Ruby Body, Mary Rutherford and Isobel Kilpatrick
Left to right:Kay and Michael Carlin, Margaret Mc Glinchy and Donna Fahy, Bridie O' Donnell and June Dunlop, Margaret Sharkey and Sandra Sharkey
Left to right: Tia Mc Guinness and Theresa McGowan, Niree McMorris, Eileen McFarland and Jane McMorris, Billy Moore and Nuala O'Hara
Recorded conversations with Derry’s Shirt Factory Workers.
This project uncovers the unique perspectives of skilled and vibrant Derry Shirt Factory Workers, highlighting their creative and story-telling talents, focusing on the contribution the Shirt Factories and their mainly female workers have made in shaping the unique social, economic, and cultural identity of Derry/Londonderry.
In 1991, Walsh spent a month making charcoal drawings of women in the City Shirt Factory as they worked for the project Available Resources which was supported by the Orchard Gallery. The shirt industry in the city was already in decline at this time.
In 2006, Walsh returned to Derry and began a series of conversations with local women as part of her research project. These dialogues were recorded in the Verbal Arts Centre and revealed a rich and layered social history of women’s working lives and industrial expertise.
In 20132-2013, Walsh’s new series of interviews gathered more of these worker’s voices. Grounded in this engagement with the community of Shirt Factory Workers over two decades, her work was supported as a strand of the BT Portrait of a City Project curated by Declan Sheehan.
Most of the photographs of participants were taken by Jim (Hawks) Collins, some by Walsh herself. The portrait of Niree McMorris, Eileen McFarland and Jane McMorris was taken by Emmet Mc Laughlin.
Featured below are three radio pieces based on visual artist Louise Walsh's interviews with Derry’s shirt factory workers. These programmes were broadcast in Derry and London in October and November 2013, made within a residency by the artists’ radio station Resonance FM at Void Gallery Derry, a project also curated by Declan Sheehan for City of Culture 2013.
Resonance at Void, What's Your Bars Part 1 - Louise Walsh (8th November 2013)
Resonance at Void ,What's Your Bars Part 2 - Louise Walsh (11th November 2013)
Resonance at Void, What's Your Bars Part 3 - Louise Walsh (12th November 2013)