{"id":283,"date":"2019-09-16T07:06:23","date_gmt":"2019-09-16T07:06:23","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/wp.sunderland.ac.uk\/sungen\/?p=283"},"modified":"2019-09-16T07:23:01","modified_gmt":"2019-09-16T07:23:01","slug":"blue-plaque-unveiling","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/wp.sunderland.ac.uk\/sungen\/2019\/09\/16\/blue-plaque-unveiling\/","title":{"rendered":"Blue plaque unveiling"},"content":{"rendered":"

On 13th September, research by Dr Sarah Hellawell led to the unveiling of a plaque to Dr Marion Phillips at 18 Foyle Street, Sunderland.\u00a0 Marion was Sunderland’s first female MP, and was in office from 1929 to 1931.\u00a0 Sarah’s research into Marion’s important role in the Labour Party, and in particular how she sought to improve the lives of working people in the North East, also revealed the location of the Labour Party’s Sunderland Committee Rooms in Foyle Street.\u00a0 This blue plaque is only the third dedicated to a woman in Sunderland (the other two are those for Elizabeth Donnison, founder of the Donnison School in the Old East End, and Ida and Louise Cook (who smuggled 29 people out of Nazi Germany at the outbreak of the Second World War: their blue plaque is on Chester Road, marking a spot close to where they were born).<\/p>\n

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The event was attended by the Mayor and Mayoress of Sunderland, the MP for Houghton and Sunderland South, Bridget Phillipson, and members of local gender activist groups NEFlow (which seeks to ameliorate “period poverty”), and pupils from St Wilfrid’s Catholic College who help run a project called Canny Clean, which seeks to ameliorate personal hygiene poverty in young people irrespective of their gender.\u00a0 The young people in particular show that political activism is alive and well in the region, and would doubtless have made Marion very proud.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

The unveiling was carried out with a flourish by Sarah.<\/p>\n

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After the unveiling, everyone went to a reception held at 170 High Street West, which is part of the Sunderland Heritage Action Zone and will be the new home of Pop Recs Ltd.\u00a0 This venue was used to house an exhibition of Sunderland’s Rebel Women as part of the Heritage Open Day celebrations.\u00a0 Marion is one of the people included in this list.<\/p>\n

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The illustrations for the Rebel Women were produced by recent Sunderland graduate Kathryn Robertson, with text by Jessica Andrews.\u00a0 There were also exhibitions relating to the social empowerment work of Pop Recs, and the plans for HAZ in the area.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

Other women who appear in the Rebel Women of Sunderland exhibition include Elizabeth Donnison and the Cook sisters, mentioned above, but also:<\/p>\n

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Hope Winch, who founded the pharmacy department at Sunderland Technical College, later University;<\/p>\n

Margaret Drybugh, who was a Sunderland-born missionary who was in Singapore at the time of the Japanese invasion during the Second World War. She was interned in a camp in Sumatra where she led the way in maintaining camp moral;<\/p>\n

Kate Adie, ground-breaking broadcast journalist who remains passionately attached to Sunderland;<\/p>\n

Kenickie (Lauren Laverne, Marie Nixon and Emma Jackson), who pioneered female post-punk pop;<\/p>\n

Abbie Robinson, who is paraclimbing world champion, and is the first blind woman to represent Britain in a climbing competition;<\/p>\n

Steph Houghton and Jill Scott, former Sunderland players, now playing for England, which Steph captained at the 2019 World Cup;<\/p>\n

Emili Sand\u00e9, Sunderland-born musician who is now our Chancellor.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

On 13th September, research by Dr Sarah Hellawell led to the unveiling of a plaque to Dr Marion Phillips at 18 Foyle Street, Sunderland.\u00a0 Marion was Sunderland’s first female MP, and was in office...<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":11,"featured_media":289,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-283","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-home"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/wp.sunderland.ac.uk\/sungen\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/283","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/wp.sunderland.ac.uk\/sungen\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/wp.sunderland.ac.uk\/sungen\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/wp.sunderland.ac.uk\/sungen\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/11"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/wp.sunderland.ac.uk\/sungen\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=283"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/wp.sunderland.ac.uk\/sungen\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/283\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":292,"href":"https:\/\/wp.sunderland.ac.uk\/sungen\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/283\/revisions\/292"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/wp.sunderland.ac.uk\/sungen\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/289"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/wp.sunderland.ac.uk\/sungen\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=283"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/wp.sunderland.ac.uk\/sungen\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=283"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/wp.sunderland.ac.uk\/sungen\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=283"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}