Special Events
One-off events, festivals and heritage days.
Women's History Month
Explore the FREE events and exhibitions at Bruce Castle Museum & Archive this March to mark Women's History Month.
Events
Highlight Gallery Talk: What's a 'Women's Issue'? The Joyce Butler Project
- Friday 6 March, 2.30pm to 3.30pm
Free, all welcome. Booking recommended.
As 'The National Woman's MP', explore Joyce Butler's fight to ensure 'housewives' campaigns and voices were considered of national interest.
Throughout her life, Wood Green MP Joyce Butler campaigned tirelessly on a number of fronts - housing, healthcare access, legislation to prevent sex discrimination, and consumer rights, to name a few - earning her the moniker 'The National Woman's MP'. In this highlight gallery talk, Chlo Williams (Outreach & Engagement Officer: The Joyce Butler Project) explores Butler's wide-ranging career and interests, as she fought for 'housewives' campaigns to be considered of national interest and priority. This Women's History Month, join us to ask what makes a 'women's issue', how women like Joyce Butler have fought for change over decades, and what we have all gained from their activism?
This event is part of the Joyce Butler Project based at Bruce Castle Museum & Archive. The project examines the histories of women's lives, rights and work in post-war Britain.
Please book your free ticket for this gallery talk via Eventbrite.
Organised by the Joyce Butler Project with Bruce Castle Museum & Archive.
For any enquiries, please email museum.services@haringey.gov.uk
Haringey Women's History Walk - Pioneers and Pleasure: Muswell Hill Women
- Sunday 8 March, 2pm to 3.30pm
Free, all welcome. Booking essential.
Meet: At 1.45pm for 2pm start outside The Everyman Cinema, Fortis Green Rd, Muswell Hill, London N10 3HS
From suffragettes to the feminist punk band The Slits, Muswell Hill has some remarkable women to discover. First settled as part of a medieval shrine to Mary, mother of Jesus, more secular inhabitants include an influential 20th century designer Peggy Angus and pioneering Egyptologist Myrtle Broome. Just join your guide Oonagh Gay on this 90-minute tour and learn more on this free walk about women from Muswell Hill.
Please book your free ticket for this walk via Eventbrite.
Oonagh Gay is a fully qualified tour guide who regularly does walks and tours around Haringey and London with Islington Guided Walks.
This is a special free walking tour for Women's History Month organised by Bruce Castle Museum and Archive with Oonagh Gay (tour guide) and Haringey Culture Team.
Please dress for the weather and wear suitable footwear.
For any queries please email museum.services@haringey.gov.uk
If you - or any of your group - are no longer able to attend, please cancel your ticket as soon as possible to allow your free place (s) to be given to others. Thank you.
Creative Craft Workshop with upcycling artist PLASTIQUE By Siân
- Sunday 8 March, 2pm to 4pm
Free, suitable for ages 15+. Booking essential. Materials and refreshments provided.
This Women's History Month join Plastique By Siân at Bruce Castle Museum as she shares her crafting skills and creative ideas at this afternoon workshop. Using upcycled waste plastics and jewellery clasps, you can recycle and be inspired to make a unique, handmade and lovely gift – one that is sustainable and also in good time for that special woman in your life for Mothering Sunday. All welcome – from novice to experienced crafters.
Please book your free ticket for this workshop via Eventbrite.
For any queries, please email museum.services@haringey.gov.uk.
Organised by Bruce Castle Museum & Archive with Haringey Culture Team.
PLASTIQUE By Siân (plastiquebysian.com)
If you are no longer able to attend the workshop, please cancel your ticket for your free place to allow others on the waiting list to join. Thank you.
Highlight Gallery Talk: Letters from the Archive - The Joyce Butler Project
- Friday 13 March, 2.30pm to 3.30pm
Free, all welcome. Booking recommended.
Hear and see letters written from women to Joyce Butler, campaigning to introduce legislation against sex discrimination in women's lives.
Wood Green MP Joyce Butler's campaign to introduce legislation against sex discrimination in education and employment attracted widespread public interest. The letters she received from women across the country provide an exciting window into women's working and family lives during a period of transformational upheaval.
Join Dr Lyndsey Jenkins (Mansfield College - University of Oxford) - the Project Lead, Joyce Butler Project - as she introduces previously unseen letters from the Joyce Butler Archive collection at Bruce Castle Museum & Archive. She discusses what they suggest about women's experiences at work and in the home, as well as the political, social and economic climate of 1960s and 1970s Britain. They cover the impact of immigration, the 'white heat of technology', the rise of the women's liberation movement, and the ongoing problems of poverty.
Please book your free ticket for this gallery talk via Eventbrite.
This event is part of the Joyce Butler Project based at Bruce Castle. The project examines the histories of women's lives, rights and work in post-war Britain.
Organised by the Joyce Butler Project with Bruce Castle Museum & Archive
For any enquiries, please email museum.services@haringey.gov.uk
Evening Talk: Campaigning for Jobs in 1980s Britain - Haringey Women's Employment Project
- Thursday 19 March, 7.30m to 9pm
Free, all welcome. Booking required.
This Women's History Month, come along to Bruce Castle Museum and Archive for an evening talk by Dr. Natalie Thomlinson (University of Reading) and panel discussion with the former organisers of the Haringey Women's Employment Project - Carmelita Kadeena-Whyte, Ursula Murray, and Joan Neary.
Women are rarely seen as the primary victims of the unemployment crisis that hit Britain in the 1980s. By 1979, women’s unemployment rates were higher than men’s across the UK. Women's experiences often went unreported - both at the time, and later. This talk explores the experiences of women looking for jobs here in North London. It illuminates the archives of the Haringey Women’s Employment Project and their activism around barriers that faced local women struggling to find work, such as racial discrimination alongside sex discrimination, and lack of childcare or training. This event celebrates the achievements of the group, and asks what can their activism teach us today.
This event is part of the Joyce Butler Project based at Bruce Castle. The project examines the histories of women's lives, rights and work in post-war Britain. www.brucecastle.org
Booking is essential. Please book your free place via Eventbrite.
Doors open 6.30pm – a chance for refreshments and visit the project exhibition 'The National Woman's MP: Joyce Butler, women's rights and women's liberation'. Talk: 7.30 – 9pm
Organised by the Joyce Butler Project with Bruce Castle Museum & Archive. For any enquiries, please email museum.services@haringey.gov.uk
Exhibitions
Joyce Butler: 'The National Woman's MP' (temporary exhibition, until August 2026)
- Wednesdays to Sundays, 1pm to 5pm
This exhibition celebrates the contributions Joyce Butler (1910-1992) made towards the improvement of women’s lives as Councillor and MP for Wood Green from 1947 to 1979. A pioneering MP in many respects - most notably she instigated what became the Sex Discrimination Act 1975. Butler was deeply immersed in local politics, universally respected for her expertise in housing and local government, and the first Chairman of the newly formed Haringey Council in 1965. A campaigner for peace, consumer rights, and environmental protection, her political concerns remain vital and urgent today.
Curated in partnership with Dr Lyndsey Jenkins, Associate Professor and Tutorial Fellow in History, Mansfield College, University of Oxford, this exhibition is part of an AHRC funded heritage project 'The National Woman’s MP: Joyce Butler, women's rights and women's liberation from the 1950s to the 1970s’.
In Bloom: A Visual Poetry Exhibition by local wordsmith Lucia Morciano (temporary exhibition)
- Wednesday 25 March to Sunday 12 April - Wednesdays to Sundays, 1pm to 5pm
- Meet the Artist Event on Sunday 12 April - free tickets available from Eventbrite
'In Bloom' – Praise women, the arrival of Spring, and their concurrent blooming! Exploring the history of floral patterns and social paradigms from the 1920s to the 2020s, the poet Lucia invites women and non-binary people to ruffle up feathers, encouraging them to be vocal and bold. In Bloom exhibition presents a selection of found, concrete and cut-up poetry – all new works. This is poetry, the like you’ve never seen. Poetry you can touch. Made not only with words. It’s innovative, inventive and, most importantly, environmental.
About the Artist
Lucia Morciano is a bilingual wordsmith, linguist and award-winning poet.
Her original visual poetry, poetry merch and zines, and handmade stationery are sold in markets and events, and her poetry zines are shelved in several UK bookshops. In 2022, one of her poems became an award-winning animation short film and in 2024, she was invited to host her first visual poetry solo exhibition. Her live custom typewritten poetry is loved and requested at events and pop-ups throughout London.
#Savethedate: Haringey History Fair 2026
- Saturday 16 May
After a gap year in 2025 due to our MEND Restoration works we are thrilled that the Haringey History Fair returns to Bruce Castle Museum & Archive this May 2026!
May marks local and community history month and the history fair will provide a time to reconnect, discover and be inspired by more of Haringey’s fascinating radical and pioneering history and community heritage.
More info to come soon.
For any queries, please email museum.services@haringey.gov.uk