HISTORY OF HERSTORY

  • Herstory was started in 2015 by award-winning creative and communicator Melanie Lynch. This arts activism production company started as a creative collective of designers, writers, and artists. The first Herstory event took place on Culture Night in September 2015 in Melanie’s hometown Mullingar. In the first year activity included a theatre project, music commission, art film, fashion community workshop, and tribute to local poetry and theatre heroine Josephine Hart. 

  • The official national launch of Herstory took place on the 25th May 2016 at the Rotunda in Dublin, featuring spellbinding performances by Tara Flynn, Amy De Bhrún, Smock Alley Theatre and more. 

  • The inaugural Herstory Light Festival launched on Nollaig na mBan / Women’s Little Christmas on the 6th January 2017, with 16 counties participating across the island of Ireland. The Festival went viral with a P.R. reach of 2,416,098 in the Republic,  making the RTÉ News, BBC News and the front page of the Irish Independent.

  • Herstory Salon events launched in January 2017 at Trinity College Dublin and toured  to St. Patrick’s Festival, Culture Night, International Literature Festival, The Irish Times, University of Oxford, and more. Fiona Lowe joined the team and her dynamism was influential in building key partnerships and developing new projects, especially in Northern Ireland. 

  • The second Herstory Light Festival in 2018 goes viral internationally with participation in the USA, UK, Spain, Sweden, France, Lithuania, Slovenia, and Poland. The illuminations continue every year, bringing women out of the shadows and into the light. 

  • In January 2018, Herstory initiated and co-produced Blazing a Trail, funded by the Department of Foreign Affairs (DFA) and curated by the DFA Historian-in-Residence at EPIC The Irish Emigration Museum. The global tour is managed and funded by DFA HQ and the Mission network. This is the first women’s exhibition to tour the Irish Embassy network, reaching 55 Embassies worldwide. On Brigid’s Day 2019 it was showcased at the United Nations Headquarters in New York and the Council of Europe. 

  • In September 2018, RTÉ commissioned Herstory on RTÉ, the first comprehensive women’s storytelling platform on the national broadcaster. The programme launched in Sept 2019 and ran across RTÉ TV & DIGITAL for 6 months featuring a major documentary TV series, animation series, podcasts, RTÉ Culture microsite, school workshops, the international Herstory Light Festival with 55 events, and a special episode of RTÉ Nationwide. 

  • In Spring 2019, Herstory launched the campaign to make Brigid’s Day Ireland’s first national holiday in honour of a woman, with an online petition and strategy to secure the support of politicians and key stakeholders. Our team continued the momentum over 3 years and generated the perfect media storm. The government made Brigid’s Day official in 2023. 

  • In October 2019, the Herstory Education Trust CLG was incorporated and launched as a branch of the original Herstory production company. In contrast to the handful of women we learn about in Irish schools, we discovered that there are over one thousand fascinating women featured in the Dictionary of Irish Biography. The amnesia of women’s stories is not just an Irish problem - this is a global phenomenon. The Trust’s founding mission was to produce dynamic educational resources for schools and campaign for equal gender representation on the official school curriculum.

  • Katelyn Hanna joined the team as researcher and project manager. Dr. Emma Black and Andrew Simpson provided expertise and pioneering ideas in designing the school resources. 

New education projects created by the Trust include:

  • ïThe Trust created a series of Herstory 20/20 school workshops and lesson plans to support the Herstory on RTÉ project in October 2019, thanks to funding from the Community Foundation for Ireland. 

  • In 2020, the Movement project was launched to tell the parallel life stories of migrant women from 30 countries. This educational programme promoting diversity and inclusion was circulated with lesson plans to schools nationwide and through our partners in Egypt, Palestine, Slovenia, and Czech Republic. Also featuring the Parallel Peace Project with partners in Palestine including the Jerusalem Centre for Women, Terra Sancta School and the Hazelwood Integrated College in Belfast. Funded by Anna Lindh Foundation and co-funded by the EU, and Community Foundation for Ireland. 

  • On Nollaig na mBan 2021, the Mother & Child project was co-produced with Safe Ireland to raise awareness of domestic violence and coercive control. 

  • As part of the Decade of Centenaries, Wicklow County Council’s Arts and Heritage Offices and the Archives Service joined forces with Herstory and curator Liz Kelly to produce Wicklow's Wonder Women, a fantastic programme of events to celebrate the centenaries of two local trailblazers. Averil Deverell (1893 – 1979) was the first Irish woman barrister called to the Bar in 1921 and Kate Tyrrell (1862 – 1921) was the first woman ship’s sea captain in Ireland.  The resources were circulated to local schools in Nov 2021.

  • In 2022, KIIF initiated Herstory for Peace, in partnership with the Herstory Education Trust, and funded by EU Erasmus+. This an adult education programme created to inspire and empower women peace-builders in Cyprus and Northern Ireland. A series of inter-generational workshops were produced and are made available online for free for conflict zones worldwide. 

  • On the International Day of Peace 2022, the Peace Heroines exhibition was launched, in partnership with the National Museums NI with support from the Reconciliation Fund of the Department of Foreign Affairs, the Ireland Funds of GB, Integrated Education Fund and the Department of Culture’s Co-Operation with Northern Ireland Fund. The exhibition toured to the US Congress, United Nations, Leinster House, Stormont, Áras an Uachtaráin and more. The interactive digital version of the exhibition www.peaceheroines.org was circulated with supporting lesson plans to all schools on the island of Ireland. 

  • In 2022, Melanie and Katelyn were invited by the NCCA to consult on the Irish school curriculum, presenting 69 trailblazing Irish women to be featured across all school subjects. The NCCA was notified that there are also over 1000 Irish female role models featured in the Dictionary of Irish Biography who could be on the curriculum. Together they presented the case for Ireland to create the first gender equal curriculum in the world.