A set of parade banners, designed by women and girls across the county, has been unveiled.

The 11 banners have been made as part of the year-long Celebrating Women of Cumbria project.

Artist Karen MacDougall, who lives near Appleby, has spent months working with community groups and the 11 museums involved to create these works of art.

More than 150 Girl Guides were involved, as well as museum staff, WI members, Soroptimists, Brownies and the Trefoil Guild.

After being shown in Keswick yesterday, the banners will be on display at their respective museums for the rest of 2018. They will reunite for one day - on March 3 - for a celebratory parade in Carlisle marking International Women’s Day.

The banners are a nod to history and specifically the National Union of Women’s Suffrage Societies march from Carlisle to London which started on June 18, 1913, and had amassed the support of 50,000 women by the time it arrived in the capital on July 26

It took another five years after this march for some women to be granted the vote in 1918 - even then, you had to be over the age of 30 and meet certain criteria for property ownership before being granted a vote. It wasn’t until a decade later in 1928 that all women over the age of 21 were given the right to vote.

Karen said: “One thing I tried to do was to be true to the aims of the suffragists. These banners are about women having a say, so we explored the museum’s artefacts, found out about Suffragists and Suffragettes, and then democratically chose the objects and people that appear on them.

“Each banner is unique to the particular museum and the community of women and girls who created it.”

The following museums have been involved in creating a banner: Tullie House, Carlisle; Cumbria’s Museum of Military Life, Carlisle; Senhouse Roman Museum, Maryport; Keswick Museum; Penrith and Eden Museum, Penrith; Wordsworth House, Cockermouth; Wordsworth Trust, Grasmere; The Armitt Museum, Ambleside; Ruskin Museum, Coniston; Museum of Lakeland Life and industry, Kendal; The Beacon Museum, Whitehaven.

Karen said: “It’s been a lovely collaboration, all about women listening to each other and working together.”

Cockermouth guide leader Lyn Roberts is also assistant county commissioner for Cumbria North. Her Guides spent an evening at Wordsworth House, talking with Gwen Irving, who was playing the part of Dorothy Wordsworth.

A group of Guides, Rangers and Brownies then spent a day helping to create the banner.

“It was so good to see all the girls getting stuck in and learning about all the great women who have made Cumbria what it is today,” said Lyn.

Nicola Lawson, of The Beacon Museum in Whitehaven, said: “It’s been great getting involved with the community and having them engage with us. It’s been a fantastic county-wide project.”

Kate Parry is manager of the Cumbria Museum Consortium. “It’s been a great way for Guides to see what museums can offer and it’s so good to see different groups collaborating.”

The project has been funded by Arts Council England and the Cumbria Community Foundation.

A Facebook Page, Celebrating Women of Cumbria, has been created to offer a joint platform for stories from the participating museums and also to encourage the sharing of stories of extraordinary women or unsung heroines living in our communities across the county today.