Howway the Lasses

This jaunty hand-drawn animation charts the history of womens revolutionary road to freedom in the North East - from Stone Age sister to suffragette of the twentieth century.

South Shields born animator Sheila Graber takes a wry look at the ups and downs of womens quest for emancipation. Along the way, we meet some of the North Easts true pioneers Northumbrian Jacobite heroine Dorothy Forster, gutsy Grace Darling, Labour class warrior and Jarrow crusader, Ellen Wilkinson, and the militant suffragette, Connie Lewcock. The title is the message, which subverts a popular Geordie chant: Get a move on lasses!

After Grabers animations screened on national and regional television including BBC Look North in 1975, Tyne Tees Television producer Heather Ging requested Howway the Lasses for the series Come In If You Can Get In. It featured in an edition on the history of women in the North East. Over the years Graber moved from pastel to pixels and the world of computer animation, from amateur experimentation after work, (in her own words a bit like Tony Hancock in The Rebel), to professional commissions and an international reputation. She was presented with a Lifetime Achievement Award by the Royal Television Society in 2004.