This Girl Did: Dorothy Wordsworth and Women’s Mountaineering

18 November 2018

Kendal Montain Festival

Brewery Arts Centre Theatre, Kendal

200 years ago, on October 7 1818, Dorothy Wordsworth and her friend Mary Barker climbed England’s highest peak: Scafell Pike. Dorothy’s account is among the earliest surviving accounts of the feat, and was a pioneering event in the history of women’s mountaineering.

At this event, we will premiere a short film created as part of the project This Girl Did: Dorothy Wordsworth and Women’s Mountaineering by the award-winning filmmakers Jago Miller, Richard Berry and Ben Barden, in collaboration with Cumbria-based artist Alex Jakob-Whitworth, the Wordsworth Trust and academics from Lancaster University. The film interweaves a performance piece by Jakob-Whitworth that reimagines Dorothy’s ascent of Scafell with details from Dorothy’s account of the excursion and research on Scafell Pike’s cultural history.

Alongside the film première, this event will feature talks by Joanna Taylor (University of Manchester) on the history of Dorothy’s climb, and Alex Jakob-Whitworth and Louise Ann Wilson on their creative responses to Dorothy Wordsworth’s legacies for walking practices.

Louise's presntation looks at Dorothy's Room and Women's Walks to Remember: "With memory I was there."

Image by Alex Jacob-Whitworth