National Museum of Roller Derby

The National Museum of Roller Derby (NMRD) collection was founded at Glasgow Women’s Library in 2012 as Harrison’s contribution to the Library’s 20th anniversary celebrations. As a new ‘outreach’ initiative, the NMRD aims to bring a whole new, strong and revolutionary young audience to the Library, by using it as a home for the UK’s first permanent archive for the new and exciting all-female, full-contact sport of Women’s Flat Track Roller Derby.
Project website

To celebrate their 20th anniversary, Glasgow Women’s Library commissioned twenty of Scotland’s leading female contemporary artists to make new work in response to their collection. Harrison initially chose to use this invitation as an opportunity to undertake an informal residency in the library and to develop her knowledge and understanding of women’s history – specifically the Women’s Liberation Movement of the 1970s.

Rather than produce an ‘edition’ to be sold to raise funds for the Library (which was the initial brief), Harrison thought it would be more beneficial and have greater lasting impact on everyone involved if she used her real skills as an artist – specifically those of administration, project coordination and communication – to develop an ‘outreach’ project; an experiment in audience development. The National Museum of Roller Derby (NMRD) attempts to bring a whole new, strong and revolutionary young audience to Glasgow Women’s Library, by using it as the home for the UK’s first official archive of the new and exciting all-female, full-contact sport of Women’s Flat Track Roller Derby (WFTDA).

Working closing alongside the Glasgow Roller Derby league (with which she is currently training), Harrison hopes to use this project to examine the essence of contemporary grassroots organisation captured in WFTDA mantra “by the skaters, for the skaters”. In the much-hyped year of 2012, she aims to test the political limits of sport by brokering a lasting partnership between Roller Girls all over the country and the important shared heritage contained within the Library’s archive, to see what might emerge. At a time when the UK’s women are being disproportionately affected by so-called ‘austerity measures‘, which may eventually risk reversing the important gains made in the 1970s, it is now, more than ever, vital that we remind ourselves of our successes in the past and work out how we can best work together in the present.

The NMRD project was officially inaugurated by Harrison on 14 June 2012 at a special event held at Glasgow Women’s Library. The ‘national launch’ was held at the “Chaos on the Clyde” Roller Derby Tournament at Glasgow’s Kelvinhall on 25 – 26 August 2012. For more information about the ideas behind the project, please listen to the talk given by Harrison – in full Roller Derby attire – at the Library on 22 March 2012.

2 CommentsComment on Facebook

Ellie Harrison Louise Haigh and Labour say that they will reform the complex fares system to ensure that passengers are confident that they are getting the best fare; confidence that X is the case, and X being the case are not necessarily the same thing. Simplification of fares would have to include the abolition of many fares. The assertion that simplifying the fares structure would reduce travelling costs is based upon a false premise, that being that the complicated-ness of the fares-and-ticketing structure is the reason why fares are expensive, that is not why they are expensive. They are expensive because the base level is too high. If you massively simplify the fares, one might then always be certain of getting the best available fare because there are no obscure cheaper fare hidden away in a Byzantine monolith, but that best fare is likely the best of a bad bunch. Railway fares are complicated, but it is within this myriad complexity that the nuances which facilitate cheaper options lurk; if you take a sledgehammer to the behemoth you bring down the cheaper options which lurk within the behemoth. If there are presently 18 options for doing Thing X, with 15 of those ways being cheap, and 3 of those ways being expensive, if you abolish the 15 cheap options for doing thing X you have massively simplified the paying-to-do-Thing X process because having 3 ways is much simpler than having 18 ways, and you have made it such that one is highly unlikely to not notice the cheapest of the available fares, because one is more likely to notice something when it is one amongst 3 than if it is one amongst 18, but it is nevertheless the case that the person is selecting the cheapest of the 3 most expensive. (i) Being guaranteed to always get the best fare; and (ii). getting cheaper fares are not necessarily the same thing. Be mindful of the actual specific wording of things: both before and after coming into government, Labour has never in actually promised cheaper fares, what Labour has promised is that one will be guaranteed to get the best available fare. The general public, politicians and public-transport campaign organisations alike have been seduced by the word 'simplification'. Simplification is not a virtue in and of itself. Simplification is a neutral concept, neither a good thing nor a bad thing; what is pertinent and important is the nature of the simplification. One can simplify travelling costs upwards. Simplification can simplify out the cheaper options. I deliberately say 'travelling costs', not 'fares', because thinking only terms of fares when it comes to simplification of railway fares and ticketing, and when it comes to Single-Leg Pricing is a proverbial red herring, one should think both in terms of fares AND in terms of travelling costs. Fare decreases do not necessarily mean travelling-cost. LNER is a prime example: with the June of 2023 introduction of Single-Leg Pricing on LNER, and the February of 2024 introduced of the Simpler Fares pilot, travelling costs for using LNER have gone up. Two halved-in-price Singles are more expensive than one Day Return; a fare reduction, but a travelling-cost increase. The changes December of 2023 fares-and-ticketing changes on c2c have many of the same fare-decreases-but-travelling-cost increases as LNER, plus its pay-as-you-go tap-in-tap-out integration with Transport for London (to simplify things) has necessitated the introduction of a weekday early-evening peak period between 4.00 p.m. and 7.00 p.m., which has numerous knock-on effects which can hugely increase one's travelling costs. The answer is not reform of the fares-and-ticketing structure. The answer is not simplification of the fares-and-ticketing structure. The answer is to decrease the price of all existing fares. Do not abolish any existing fares. Do not introduce any new types of fare. Just make all existing fares 45% cheaper, and leave it at that.

As the idiom goes: 'Be careful what you wish for, because it might come true'. Reform will only be good if it is good reform. We don't need reform, we need good reform. Some might fear that prices would inevitably be rationalised upwards. Inevitably, the rationalisation would rationalise out the cheaper options. Some might fear that reform of the fares-and-ticketing structure would, inevitably, reform travelling costs upwards, and reform out the cheaper options. Some might fear that simplification of the fares-and-ticketing structure would, inevitably, simplify travelling costs upwards, and simplify out the cheaper options. Just take a look at LNER. Be careful what you wish for, because it might come true.