Between the 1970s and 1980s, the United Kingdom found itself in a sociopolitical context that permeated the working class with a nearly homogeneous sense of unease. In the early 1970s, the UK experienced a series of events that led to tension and mobilization among minorities: the rise in violence in Ireland, racist attacks that were driving the Black population into extreme poverty with increasing speed and frequency, the reduction of women's wages, which forced a large part of the female population to leave their jobs to become nurses or domestic workers, as well as the abolition of their sexual rights and the restriction of their reproductive rights, among other things.
In the midst of creativity and activism, in 1974 the feminist magazine Red Rag published an advertisement inviting women to discuss how to combat the stigma and oppression of women. It was there that a group of three female students from the Faculty of Fine Arts joined forces with the aim of promoting this cause, creating the See Red Women's Workshop.
The See Red workshop and movement conveyed more than just a political message. They sought to denounce injustices and reorient progressive perspectives through activism via creativity, especially poster design. Their posters, imbued with what were then revolutionary messages through graphic design, addressed diverse themes such as women's emancipation, domestic violence, the lack of sex education, workplace inequality, reproductive rights, and the particular vulnerability of Black women. See Red transformed poster creation into a powerful tool for activism, education, and cooperation among women.
The workshop was financed through contributions from its own members and fundraising. All creative proposals were evaluated collectively, and men were not allowed to participate. This self-financing led the workshop to define a very specific graphic style. While over the years the workshop combined various techniques, such as screen printing with collage, its posters were often monochromatic due to the limited budget for inks. The weight of its designs lay in color and direct political messages. See Red used red in its central symbol of the feminist struggle and as a means of highlighting the issues women faced at the time. These ingenious pieces, which also sought to reclaim the accessibility and usefulness of creative practice, ultimately became a movement that resonated with women from all over the world. Through the visual arts, the group became an underground feminist counterculture. Illustrators, photographers, cartoonists and designers found in the movement a means of collective denunciation with which to express themselves clearly and forcefully, as well as boldly.
“At that time, producing screen-printed posters was the quickest and cheapest way to get our messages across. Working as a cooperative, without hierarchies, without anyone taking credit, sharing skills and knowledge, and being accessible to all women, was the fundamental principle behind the creation of the workshop. All designs were developed collectively, with no single person taking credit. We believed that anyone can draw and create a poster, and we actively set out to subvert the concept of the Artist with a capital “A” as the sole individual creator.” Susan Mackie
Member of See Red (Oct 2021. Via /archives.lse.ac.uk/records/5SRW)
The workshop was established on Walworth Road, London, and the space was prepared by the women themselves, who at that time worked in construction. Walworth Road placed them in a hostile and dangerous environment, where violence against the workshop was constant: they suffered numerous attacks from pro-Nazi groups, often finding the workshop completely destroyed and its telephone lines cut.
In 1983, the workshop moved to a more secure location, but it also ceased disseminating its exclusively feminist message. The posters created up to that point continued to be sold, but the movement shifted its focus to providing design and printing services to other community groups, until it finally closed its doors in 1990.
For over 16 years, a total of 45 women were part of the movement driven by the creation of art and educational workshops through which they expressed their grievances and shared their progressive ideas regarding women's freedom and equality. See Red Women's Workshop, like so many other activist groups made up of both women and men, emerged as a resistance movement in response to the problematic lack of awareness of minorities in a United Kingdom where solidarity across gender, class, and race was essential.
Find the only book published to date. A collection of testimonials and all the posters produced, published by Four Corners Books . 
See Red Women's Workshop: Feminist Posters 1974-1990. Foreword by Sheila Rowbotham
Credits:
All these posters are creations of See Red Women's Workshop. Open license for non-commercial use. Via https://seeredwomensworkshop.wordpress.com/
