Category: Uncategorized

It is two years now since our Pendle Radicals team embarked on an enquiry into the singular life and work of the extraordinary Ethel Carnie Holdsworth.  Now we can tell you about two exciting developments in swift succession, which give a wonderful new impetus to our ongoing research into Ethel.

Read about the fully funded collaborative doctorate entitled ‘Songs of a Factory Girl: Ethel Carnie Holdsworth and radical working-class women’s writing’.  

Also find out about our partnership with the BBC Novels project, Lancashire Library Service and Libraries Connected (a national body that aims to maximise the offer from libraries), on creating a podcast about Ethel.

You can read all the details in our blog here.

Contributors to Pendle Radicals are developing a series of themed Radicals walks.  After the Two Toms, celebrating two pioneers of the countryside movement, comes this homage to two inspirational campaigning women.  Bob Sproule gives a preview of this urban/rural trek linking historic locations in Nelson and Earby.

To read more about this walk, that takes in locations connected to Selina Cooper and Katharine Bruce Glasier, read Bob’s full blog here.

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Sick of Being Normal

is a song by Notsensibles.

I wrote it.

It’s just a nondescript one chord teenage angstism.

40 years later, and catalysed by Mid Pennine Arts (no hyphen), who were there right at the start,  the idea of a celebration of the local punk scene is born. It slots neatly into Mid Pennine’s Pendle Radicals project. We’re close to Pendle (I have a splendid view from the ranch) and by jove we’re radical.

Click here for the full blog blog by Stephen John ‘Sage’ Hartley.

Fresh air and green space are precious commodities at present. Our Radicals researchers want to honour the pioneers who gave working class people a chance of sharing those bounties. Walking guide author and Pendle Radicals volunteer Nick Burton writes about T A Leonard and the collective joys of rambling and singing.

Click here for the full blog

Writer/composer/musician/fell runner Boff Whalley is one third of the creative powerhouse behind sick of being normal. Back in the punk moment, he was a stalwart of chimp eats banana. Boff considers how that unruly creative flowering has stayed with so many contributors through their later lives, and how punk in Pennine Lancashire has contributed to a longer story of nonconformism, independence and dissent.

Click here for the full blog