WI Scrapbooks and Community Archives: Women’s Experiences of Record-keeping in 1960s Rural England

1965 marked the 50th anniversary of the formation of the Women’s Institute (WI), which some members commemorated by making a scrapbook recording village life in England and Wales. As this competition shows, scrapbooks were just as appealing to community organizations such as the WI, as they were to individuals and families, yet it is the latter who have attracted the most scholarly interest. I reorientate this focus to argue that scrapbooks have historically functioned as community archives, inaugurating WI women into becoming their villages’ record-keepers, as they recorded what it meant to them to live in the English countryside in the 1960s. In their submissions, WI women reflected on the opportunities and challenges of creating an archive, allowing a rare insight into the experiences of grassroots record-keeping by an overlooked group of community archivists. By focusing on members of the WI, a largely conservative, countryside organization, this article diversifies both the sites of community archives, as well as the demographics of those who participated in community archival practices.”