MAY I introduce you to Hattie Hasan MBE. I cannot express my admiration enough for this remarkable woman.
After battling systemic barriers in the skilled trades and construction industries, she founded Stopcock Women’s Plumbers in 1990, the UK’s only national company of women plumbers and heating engineers.
She also offers consultancy to companies to increase the numbers of tradeswomen in their workforces. In the height of the pandemic, she set up the NFP, the Register of Tradeswomen CIC, which connects customers with a national database of tradeswomen, and also aims to enable and empower women survivors of domestic abuse to train in the skilled trades industry. For which she received an MBE. And she’s based in West Yorkshire, my own home county. I’m so very proud of her.
Hattie has her partner in work and her partner in life, Mica May, supporting and working hard to smash through the institutionalised misogyny that women are still facing even now, as a minority in the construction and skilled trades industries. And they both do it with aplomb.
It was heartwarming to see Hattie and so many other skilled tradeswomen coming together at the recent ‘Women Installers Together’ event, representing their respective trades. Thank you for all you do, keep fighting the fight.
Hattie is one of the participants in my Arts Council National Lottery-funded photography project, ‘Women in Uniform’.
As a female photographer of South Asian heritage, I’m somewhat of a rarity in my field, I’ve found. Moreover women of colour, (Black, Asian, Hispanic, Arab - BAHA) who occupy senior roles in their respective industries are still lower in number than their white, male counterparts. And yet I know we exist, because I exist.
To celebrate these hidden figures, I am inviting UK based BAHA women (including trans women of colour) to have their portraits shot for ‘Women in Uniform’. In a conceptual way, it’s a project that shares their individual truths, centring around what their ‘uniform’ means to them.
A recorded Zoom conversation will take place first to discuss this, then I will arrange to take their portraits in my Shipley- based studio, from now until February 2023. I am currently looking for more participants for the project.
The portraits will be part of a groundbreaking Arts Council funded national exhibition, involving women of colour from all over the UK. It will launch on International Women’s Day, on March 8, 2023, at the Haworth Art Gallery in Accrington and will run until May 14, 2023.
As a huge supporter of ‘Black Lives Matter’ and also marginalised and minority communities in general, ‘Women in Uniform’ is an organic progression in my own artistic evolution. It will celebrate the achievements of professional women of colour in industries where we are traditionally under-represented.
In an effort to dismantle preconceived stereotypes and systemic, institutionalised racism and misogyny, I want to build a strong subject dialogue and discuss the complex interplay between women of colour and cultural sensitivities by inviting them to discuss the sub-text and role of their uniform and how it represents them individually.
The uniform doesn’t have to be a set uniform as such - it can be ‘civilian’ clothes.
Finally, as a thank you, all participants will receive their own 10x8 in signed and mounted gift portrait from the series.
Thank you so much to those of you who have already committed to participate, I look forward to sharing your portraits and your stories to the world.
If you would like to get involved or you know of anyone who may be a suitable candidate for this project, please ask them to get in touch at info@shybphotography.co.uk
* For more about Shy’s work go to shybphotography.com
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