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Our next WHiST Across the Decades event will be held in our coffee bar on Thursday 27th August, 2:30-5:30pm. We'll be looking at the years 1986-1990, five years which represented a great many turning points, including the dismantling of the Berlin Wall, Nelson Mandela's release from prison, the apex of Neighbours-mania, and of course, in 1986, the foundation of Women's Health in South Tyneside. We've added a craft activity this time: participants will be invited to design th

16th July saw the first of our monthly WHiST Across the Decades events. Each month, we'll throw a special party to help us commemorate and consider a five-year period in WHiST's history. This time, we explored 1980-85 ...

As we are starting to catalogue our own WHiST archive, we've been getting some excellent insights from Tyne and Wear Archives - very much enriched by today's visit to their archives store. We learned a great deal about the types of collections they hold, and the ways in which they document each item. Our guide, archivist Laura, also showed us some fascinating examples from the stores, including a town charter from the time of Charles II, richly embellished and inscribed in

Check out our growing collection of oral histories, where women connected with WHiST share their fascinating stories. https://youtube.com/playlist?list=PLBGiuUALnZ1E&si=e1WK5IY64IxpI3HY

Our weekly Heritage Group has a revised timetable: in line with participant feedback where longer sessions would be preferred, we'll meet on Monday mornings at 10:30-12:00, then have lunch break before reconvening at 12:30-2:30pm. We've also set a regular plan so that all the aspects of the project will be allocated to a particular Monday of each month: The first Monday of each month will focus on oral histories, personal stories, audio (and eventually turning these recordin

Our next WHiST Across the Decades event will be on Thursday 15th October, 3-6pm in our coffee bar. We're now up to the five-year period that saw the Millennium Bug panic; Cool Britannia; BritPop; Girl Power; "Blair's Babes"; the death of Diana; Channel 5; and the first appearances of The Teletubbies, Nigella Lawson, and The Matrix. Expect our usual mix of great free food, a quiz, poetry and music. Dressing up is entirely optional, but we can do our best to party like it's 1

No, not Northern Europe, but Gateshead's Baltic Centre for Contemporary Art Our Heritage Volunteers knew that the gallery was hosting an exhibition featuring South-Tyneside-born photographer, Tish Murtha (1956-2013) and were keen to see her wonderful social realist images in a gallery setting. We were not disappointed: Tish's work is testament to her empathy and understanding of Tyneside people. The pictures are both documentary and deeply moving and covered aspects of worki

16th July saw the first of our monthly WHiST Across the Decades events. Each month, we'll throw a special party to help us commemorate and consider a five-year period in WHiST's history. This time, we explored 1980-85 ...

Our next WHiST Across the Decades event will be on Thursday 17th September, 3-6pm in our coffee bar. This time we're going back to the days when John Major was in No 10, Bill Clinton was in the White House; acid house and techno were driving rave culture; Friends was first on the telly; new age travellers were making camper van pilgrimages to Glastonbury with lurchers in tow; Nirvana were maxing out the grunge; the iron curtain was falling apart and the ANC were in power in S

16th July saw the first of our monthly WHiST Across the Decades events. Each month, we'll throw a special party to help us commemorate and consider a five-year period in WHiST's history. This time, we explored 1980-85 ...

Our next WHiST Across the Decades event will be held in our coffee bar on Thursday 27th August, 2:30-5:30pm. We'll be looking at the years 1986-1990, five years which represented a great many turning points, including the dismantling of the Berlin Wall, Nelson Mandela's release from prison, the apex of Neighbours-mania, and of course, in 1986, the foundation of Women's Health in South Tyneside. We've added a craft activity this time: participants will be invited to design th

On 6th August 2026, WHiST Heritage volunteers and staff were lucky enough to visit FabLab at The Word to learn how to use their sublimation printer to print tote bags of our own design. We had decided to take inspiration from the slogan-heavy and iconic 1980s' FRANKIE SAYS [RELAX; etc] T-shirts and create bags with a theme of WHIST SAYS ...

This was a morning of great connection for members of our Salus Heritage Project group, sharing memories for artist Eric MacLennan's wonderful project "Making the Invisible Visible".

On June 11th, we gathered at Hedworth Hall to celebrate WHiST's first 40 years, to launch our Salus Heritage Project, and to look forward to the future. A packed function room was treated to a host of moving personal stories from WHiST members and volunteers; postcards featuring significant South Tyneside women (including our own Angela Oxberry), a performance by the WHiST Choir and videos and soundscapes drawn from the beginnings of our project's historical research and a

16th July saw the first of our monthly WHiST Across the Decades events. Each month, we'll throw a special party to help us commemorate and consider a five-year period in WHiST's history. This time, we explored 1980-85 ...