40 CONTEXT 181 : SEPTEMBER 2024 London County Council, Rachel later stood for Parliament in the 1923 general election and campaigned ceaselessly for equal pay and employment rights. Four other remarkable women were commemorated. Susan Mary Auld (1915–2002, North Tyneside), the first woman to be awarded a degree in naval architecture from Durham University in 1936, worked in the design office of Swan Hunter and Wigham Richardson at a time when very few women were employed in shipbuilding. Jennie Shearan (born Eliza Jane Cain, 1922–2005, South Tyneside), an environmental campaigner, ignited a national dialogue about the health risks from the pollution that she and her neighbours had to endure from the Monkton coke works. She set up Hebburn Residents Action Group and took their case all the way to the European Parliament. Dorothy Donaldson Buchanan (1899–1985, Gateshead), the first female member of the Institution of Civil Engineers, passing the institution’s admission examination in 1927, was part of their design team for the Tyne Bridge and the Sydney Harbour Bridge. Hope Winch (1894–1944, Sunderland) was the founder and head of the pharmaceutical department at Sunderland Technical College in 1928, predecessor to the University of Sunderland. Inspiring Pioneers has been a great deal of work and represents a very modest contribution given the scale of the rebalancing task required to more fully reflect the stories that should be told and the people who should be commemorated. We very much welcome other initiatives, such as African Lives in Northern England, Here North East and Lost History of Women Shipbuilders, which all aim to develop more diverse interpretations of our heritage. We must keep asking who is celebrated, cared for, commemorated, and who is not. The advent of a national scheme is encouraging but, we anticipate, tiny in terms of the scale of the challenge. We saw this as a pilot project, a modest more programmatic approach. The responsive schemes that exist in Tyne and Wear are valuable but insufficient. We would like to see regular themes emerging, accompanied by broader education programmes, as with Inspiring Pioneers. John Pendlebury is professor of urban conservation and Loes Veldpaus senior lecturer in architecture and urban planning, both in the school of architecture, planning and landscape at Newcastle University.
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