Adele Patrick (Glasgow Women’s Library)

Glasgow Women’s Library (GWL) is a Recognised Collection of National Significance that houses art, archives and museum objects. It has a lending and reference library and delivers its groundbreaking programmes in an award-winning building in the heart of Glasgow’s East End.  This year it became a Finalist for the Art Fund’s Museum of The Year, recognition for its innovative and exceptional achievement in 2017. As a rare artist-led museum and archive, using feminist approaches to strategy and operations driven by a commitment to Equality, Diversity and Inclusion, GWL is modelling creative approaches across the terrain of collecting, curating and commissioning art.

Co-founder and Creative Development Manager Adele Patrick will share some of the ways art and radical records have been deployed at GWL to open up and develop collections for diverse audiences. She will focus on recent projects with creatives that have unleashed and animated GWL’s archive and museum collections, supported the Library’s development as a vital, inclusive environment and played a part in helping to define GWL’s purpose and relevance. 

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Adele Patrick has been involved in research and academic and community learning and teaching on gender for over 25 years. Adele co-founded Glasgow Women’s Library (GWL) in 1991 and is currently GWL’s Creative Development Manager. She has had a key leadership role in GWL, which has grown from a grassroots project to a Recognised Collection of National Significance and is the sole accredited museum dedicated to women’s history in the UK. She has been active in a wide range of feminist and women’s projects, has written for academic and cultural publications (editing the book of the award-winning 21 Revolutions project and contributing to the recently published Feminism and Museums, published by MuseumsEtc.) and regularly speaks at national and international conferences. Adele was Evening Times’ Scotswoman of the Year in 2016 and in 2017 received an Honorary DLitt from Glasgow School of Art/University of Glasgow and from University of Strathclyde.