New Feminist Art Lives podcast series offers a fresh account of art informed by feminism in Britain and Ireland
Dr Elspeth Mitchell is part of a team of academics and researchers behind the creation of the new Feminist Art Making History archive of oral history interviews with 60 artists, curators and writers.
Initiated in 2021, the Feminist Art Making Histories project emerged from a recognition that the histories of feminist art in Britain and Ireland remain structurally marginalised within art history, museology and arts pedagogies. It was clear that the task of recording them had become time critical as practitioners active in the 1960s and 1970s passed away.
A group of researchers from across Britain and Ireland – led by Professor Hilary Robinson (Loughborough University) and Dr Tina Kinsella (IADT) – came together over a four-year period to record, curate and archive fifty years of these under-documented histories.
Feminist Art Making Histories Team at Kettle's Yard. Photo Amy Tobin.
The result of this research is the Feminist Art Making Histories (FAMH) digital archive of over 60 oral history, long-form, interviews with feminist artists, curators and writers. Hosted by the Digital Repository of Ireland, it explores the encounter between art and feminism across Ireland and the UK, from the 1970s to the 1990s.
At the core of the project is the belief that by recovering the voices, practices and pedagogies erased from art’s official record, space can be opened for new forms of art, education and curation that honour the brilliance and labour of feminist artists, their allies and supporters, across generations.
Collectively, the interviews with artists, curators, art historians and art workers provide access to their reflections on their engagements with feminism, experiences of the art world and art education, and involvement in political campaigns and solidarity struggles.
Feminist Art Making Histories Workshop, Loughborough 2024. Photo: Hilary Robinson.
To share the archive with wider audiences, the project team launched Feminist Art Lives earlier this month – a podcast series produced by Rosie Oliver and hosted by researchers from the Feminist Art Making Histories research project.
Across eight episodes, the series unfolds stories of art and activism taken from the Feminist Art Making Histories digital archive of oral history interviews. The series offers a fresh account of art informed by feminism in Britain and Ireland, featuring artists such as Alice Maher, Marlene Smith, Sam Ainsley, Vivenne Dick, Cosey Fanni Tutti, Una Walker, Rose Frain and Symrath Patti.
These life stories are rich with debates and protests, controversy and critique, politics and creativity – drawn from a moment when everything was questioned and the category of art was tested and remade.
Feminist Art Lives podcast series. Image courtesy of Feminist Art Making Histories project.
The Feminist Art Lives podcast series launched on 2 July with an episode dedicated to art education, presented by Elspeth Mitchell and featuring interviews with Sam Ainsley, Adele Patrick, Marlene Smith, Symrath Patti, Mary Duffy, Ailbhe Smyth and Griselda Pollock.
Dr Elspeth Mitchell is the Griselda Pollock Legacy Lecturer in the School of Fine Art, History of Art and Cultural Studies at the University of Leeds, working on practices and theories of feminism and visual culture.
As Co-Investigator on Feminist Art Making Histories, she conducted oral history interviews, developed the website and podcast and shaped the project's digital and feminist approaches to archiving.
Dr Elspeth Mitchell.
Elspeth said:
“Sitting with these artists, curators and writers, often in their own studios and homes, was an extraordinary privilege.
“So many of the women we interviewed had spent decades not only making art but fighting to keep its history from disappearing, building slide libraries, writing about each other's work, archiving their own practices because no one else would.
“This archive continues that labour. Recollecting the past is essential to reshaping the future. Our new podcast, Feminist Art Lives, offers an entry point to these histories, told in the artists' own voices.”
WIP Conference Programme, collection of Rose Frain. Photo by Elspeth Mitchell.
At nearly seven hours long, Elspeth's interview with art historian, cultural theorist and Professor Emerita Griselda Pollock is a treasure trove of insights into feminism and the visual arts, and into her life and career.
In it, Pollock describes bringing a collaborative approach to her teaching, which she described as co-studying, inspired by Paulo Freire's Pedagogy of the Oppressed.
This way of working helped shape the MA in Feminism and the Visual Arts (MAFEM), the interdisciplinary programme combining feminist theory and visual culture that she founded at the University of Leeds in 1992.
Griselda Pollock in the 1980s. Photographer: Joan Russell, Guzelian Photography.
Elspeth said:
“It was a real privilege to record Griselda's account of feminist art history taking shape here in Leeds.
“So much of what we now take for granted, that feminist questions belong at the centre of art history, not its margins, was fought for and worked out here in the School of Fine Art, History of Art and Cultural Studies.
“Hearing her describe MAFEM's collaborative ethos, you realise how radical it was to treat students as co-producers of knowledge, and how much that legacy still shapes how we teach and research today.”
Womens Report, archive of Griselda Pollock. Photo by Elspeth Mitchell.
From the art school to DIY gallery, the kitchen table to the museum, Feminist Art Lives records the vitality of artistic experiment and the tactics and strategies artists and creatives found to share their work beyond the mainstream.
Alive to difference and disagreement within feminism, each episode shows how artists, makers and creatives forged paths through divisive issues, making work that continues to help us understand the world and its inequities.
Gathering voices who are rarely heard, and who remain less well-represented in public museums and art histories, Feminist Art Lives, showcases a critical generation of artists and thinkers.
More information
Listeners can explore the full oral history interviews of those featured in the podcast in the Feminist Art Making Histories open access archive available through the Digital Repository of Ireland.
The eight episodes of Feminist Art Lives are released weekly on Thursdays (from 2 July 2026). Listen to the Feminist Art Lives podcasts.
Feminist Art Making Histories (FAMH) was funded by the AHRC/Irish Research Council: UK-Ireland, Collaboration in the Digital Humanities Research Grants Scheme (2021–2025).
The FAMH team comprised of Professor Hilary Robinson (Loughborough University) and Dr Tina Kinsella (IADT), with Co-Investigators Dr Elspeth Mitchell (University of Leeds) and Professor Amy Tobin (University of Cambridge), Research Associates Dr Martina Mullaney and Dr Ana Baeza Ruiz, transcriber Jo Porter and Research Assistant Dominic Boylan.
Feature image
Womens Report, archive of Griselda Pollock. Photo by Elspeth Mitchell.
