57 anniversary celebration

Our 57th anniversary was a once in a lifetime celebration. Two “iconic” (and ironic!) Newcastle firms combine for Greggs champagne bar in Fenwicks. I booked weeks ago and got the last slot which was 11am. Our first (and last) cheese pasty - the Romesco sauce did not improve it. Hopefully it won’t be my last glass of Bolly though. Mr C had the pink one.

The queues were all the way up Northumberland Street to view the Christmas windows. They had ropes to manage the crowds. There’s bound to be another chance to see it before Christmas. It was “12 days of Christmas” and looked really good.

We walked down to the River and across the millennium bridge to the Baltic for the first major retrospective of Franki Raffles photography, featuring her output from 1984 until her early death in 1994.

She used photography to document women's lives and work. She wanted to expose and address inequality and to support solidarity and sisterhood. Her photographs capture how women face life's challenges with resilience and humour. (The photos of Soviet women working on the farm could have been my mum in the 50s). She also focused attention on male violence against women, on disability, and on the displacement caused by migration. The selection traces the way in which her practice developed and reveals connections between her work at home in Scotland, and internationally in the former Soviet Union (Russia, Georgia and Ukraine), China, Tibet, the Philippines and Israel where she travelled. The photographs give an insight into women's everyday working lives, drawing attention to issues that still affect so many today.

Maybe some of the Edinburgh Blippers are aware of the information below -

“During her lifetime, the work that Raffles was best-known for was the groundbreaking Zero Tolerance campaign launched in December 1992 to raise awareness of male violence against women and children. Raffles' images of women and girls in staged tableaux were juxtaposed with factual texts summarising the research done in Edinburgh and were displayed on billboards, buses, bus stops, in shops, pubs, cultural and council venues across Edinburgh. The original campaign had a significant impact across the city and stimulated vigorous debate amongst its citizens and visitors with several other UK authorities adopting it. It remains one of the only public health campaigns to have been delivered by a council presenting a feminist message to a mass audience. The Zero Tolerance Trust established by Raffles and Gillan continues to campaign against violence against women and children, and celebrated their thirtieth anniversary in 2022.”