PRDHT Chairman Dennis Miles and Hannah Prowse CEO of the Portsmouth Naval Base Property Trust launching the Triangle Girls project
Portsmouth Royal Dockyard Historical Trust (PRDHT) launched its mobile exhibition and the ‘Colin Lay education resource pack’ for the culmination of the ‘Triangle Girls’ project on 29 March 2022. The project explored women workers in Portsmouth Royal Dockyard during the First World War.
The launch was a bitter-sweet as the project lead, and originator of the idea to apply for a National Lottery Heritage Fund Grant (NLHF), Colin Lay sadly passed away after a battle with cancer before the project was launched. He was an ex-headmaster, and the resource pack containing the research he and the volunteers collated for the project is now dedicated to his memory. It is now hoped that the exhibition and resource pack will inspire young people, especially girls, to dig into the history of early women workers in shipbuilding and to pursue careers in technology and engineering – or in historical research.
PTUC aided the submission of the NLHF bid via the AHRC’s Gateways to the First World War initiative, and also helped to train volunteers in the context of the time period and introduced them to critical research and data collection skills. Dr Melanie Bassett, who is also a trustee of the PRDHT, also helped to create the final text and image selection for the exhibition panels.
You can find out more about the history of the Triangle Girls, and how the project came about by following this link:
About Melanie Bassett
Dr Melanie Bassett is a Faculty Research Fellow at the University of Portsmouth. She manages the PTUC website and social media outputs alongside undertaking her own research on port towns. Her PhD research, ‘The Royal Dockyard Worker in Edwardian England: Culture, Leisure and Empire’ re-examined the concept of a monolithic imperial identity and tracked the nuances of working-class imperialism. She has worked with Professor Brad Beaven on a number of WW1 projects, including ‘Mapping the National Impact of the Jutland Battle: Civic and Community Responses during the First World War’ and ‘Lest We Forget’ in partnership with Portsmouth City Museum, which culminated in a large-scale exhibition that commemorated the ways that Portsmouth and its people experienced the War.
Mel previously worked in museums and was employed at Portsmouth City Museum and the Royal Naval Museum.
Follow Melanie @melanie_bassett
