“We founded Idle Women 11 years ago as a response to austerity cuts. We were seeing a lot of women’s projects and support services closing because of underfunding, and we said, actually, we’ve got the skills to put art into social justice women’s space. We said, let’s try and make spaces that can’t be cut, closed and taken away.

Through artistic practice, we’ve made permanent spaces. The first thing we did was design and build a narrowboat. We thought, we can own that outright and no one can take it away from us. Then the community supported us to buy a mooring and garden, which we turned into a medicinal garden. That’s owned for women too. From there, it’s grown and grown.

Idle Women exists because women really need space to meet and work together, to pursue ambitions and to have what we call “reaching beyond the horizon.” We spend so much time surviving as women. We survive encounters of violence, unfair work conditions, low expectations and poor education. We’re often on the back foot.

But when we come together in a dedicated women’s space, we can really support the strengths of women. And we can say when we’re together, anything is possible. We don’t just believe that, we know that.

Idle Women has only ever worked with women. Everything we’ve ever done is women. That feels really exciting because we can show what women are capable of.

It’s always really brilliant when there is a fund specifically for women’s projects. It’s very rare, and we see them less and less. I think it’s important to recognise the whole ecology of women’s support. Crisis services are vital, but we can work alongside those specialist services to enhance the experience for women.

Ultimately, we want our spaces to be places where women come alive. I’ve never been disappointed by what happens when women come together. Even if I don’t know what the plan is, it doesn’t matter, because when women come together, it just works.”