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Business & Culture
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Women for peace: Celebrating Welsh women’s call for global peacekeeping 

The Temple of Peace and Health celebrates its 86th anniversary by honouring the lost 1920s Welsh Women’s Peace Appeal. 

In 1923-24, 30% of Wales’ women signed a petition urging the US women to use their influence to request America’s membership in the League of Nations after World War I.

A new Cardiff exhibition aims to celebrate 100 years of peace efforts by Welsh women with pieces curated from across Wales.

Almost 400,000 Welsh women signed an appeal in 1920s to the women of USA calling for world peace. The petition, forgotten over time, was recently discovered about in Cardiff’s Temple of Peace and Health during centenary of World War I. 

“There are thousands of women, just ordinary women- young and old, across communities in Wales and in America and elsewhere across the world who have all gotten involved,” says Craig Owen, the Heritage Advisor at WCIA. “It is not just the history of it but also the sheer number of women across Wales who entirely voluntarily have been inspired by the story of the campaign to do things.”

Students from schools around Wales are encouraged to lean the history and contribute pieces to the exhibition such as this.

WCIA has put up an exhibition to celebrate the women’s efforts and legacy in honour of the temple’s 86th anniversary with pieces from across Wales curated from over the past year.

“Lots of projects around… transcribing the names, searching and finding hidden histories and hidden stories,” says Fiona Feilding, the Project Manager.  “Also talking to lots and lots of communities about it because nobody knew the story. So, the stuff that you see here is sort of the kind of response to it, from communities that wanted to create something as part of the celebration.”  

Fiona Feilding with curated projects from exhibitions across Wales over the past year in Temple of Peace and Health.

The exhibition aims to promote awareness of local history among youths, to help them understand and feel proud of their own heritage, explained Craig Owen.

The Welsh deputy minister for arts and sport, Dawn Bowden, said, “I hope that the return of the petition to Wales will inspire and motivate a new generation of advocates for peace.”

Craig said, “We have been producing a lot of things for the schools, so that kids can learn about this stuff and I just kind of think if you grow up learning about the stuff that has happened that would make quite a difference about how you look at the wider world. To feeling part of it… otherwise you could grow up feeling we have got nothing to do with anything beyond our borders.”

Craig Owen explains that the exhibition is an attempt at making people of Wales feel proud of their heritage.

The original petition currently resides in the National Library of Wales on exhibition. 

The exhibition curates’ pieces made by communities from across Wales. The exhibition opened last Saturday.