She Shapes History

07/11/2024

We are launching a podcast!! And we're hosting a small Sunday afternoon get-together to celebrate! 😆🥳🤩

This podcast is a deep dive into Canberra’s q***r history, and the process of working on and researching it has helped both Zev and I (Sita) feel so much more connected to our identity as q***r Canberrans. We really do hope it does the same for you ❤️

We are so excited for this to be out in the world. We’ll be launching the first two episodes next Tuesday and then we’ll be dropping them weekly for the next months (only 8 episodes!). For now, you can go and listen to the podcast trailer—available on all streaming platforms 😎

Please enjoy the launch party invite I made using historic fonts from the late '90s and early 2000s. It will be hosted at Cafe Stepping Stone in Dickson and there will be food and drinks available to purchase from the incredible Q***r Food (the dishes will speak directly to the history shared in the podcast!). There will also be cake. It should be a really chill and lovely afternoon and honestly just a 10/10 way to finish up your weekend.

And if you’re worried about coming solo, please don’t be as either Zev or myself will personally introduce you to some people.

Register for free via the link in our bio! We’re so excited to celebrate with you.

Keep shaping history,
Sita, Zev & Team SSH

P.s. The INCREDIBLE podcast cover art is by the amazing Emma Rowland.

04/11/2024

It was such a joy to take the fabulous team Thylacine on our Badass Women of Canberra tour!

We absolutely love running private tours so reach out if that’s something you’re ever interested in (we can run one at any time/date that works for you!).

25/10/2024

Running a tour is easily the best way to spend a Friday morning ❤️

See you this weekend!

20/10/2024

What a fantastic way to start a Sunday!! Our tours were featured in the Sunday Times!

Eleri took the absolutely fabulous Sarah Rodrigues on our Badass Women of Canberra tour a few months ago and the article has *finally* made it's way into the world.

Shout out to the excellent PR & Media team at Visit Canberra for always putting She Shapes History forward for some pretty amazing opportunities.

17/09/2024

Really looking forward to this!

I’ll be speaking about why local women’s history is so important & all the amazing things that happen when we share women’s historical contributions.

Hopefully I’ll see you there 💖

- Sita

🌟 Speaker announcement 🌟

We are excited to welcome Sita Sargeant, a passionate storyteller and activist, to the TEDxCanberra 2024: ILLUMINATE stage!

As the founder of She Shapes History, a Canberra-based tourism company, she has been promoting gender equality through historical walking tours.

She's on a mission to highlight the overlooked contributions of women and q***r people, and reshape how history is told.

Join us as Sita inspires change by shedding light on the untold histories that deserve to be heard.

🎟️ Early bird sale ends on 22 September. Don't miss out! https://buff.ly/3B4iXNh

30/08/2024

Hello! 💕🌈 We’ve been a bit too busy (overwhelmed?) running tours & working on some other major things behind the scenes to post much lately 🙈😅. But this photo was honestly too good not to share.

This incredible shot of Zev was taken on one of the many amazing Pride in the Capital tours we ran for Pride Networks in Canberra this week for Wear It Purple Day 💜🏳️‍🌈🏳️‍⚧️

If you ever want to organise a tour for your team, email or DM us 🫶🏽. The only thing better than joining a tour? Getting paid by your employer to join a tour 😎

📷 Shout out to Jared from the Department of Climate Change, Energy, the Environment, and Water (what a long agency name…) for sending this through 🌈🫡

01/08/2024

It was an absolute privilege to MC the launch and unveiling of Lis Johnson’s fabulous sculpture of Senator Susan Ryan.

It was such a special event to be part of and I am so grateful to the wonderful team at ArtsACT for asking me to MC it (even though making eye regular eye contact with Dame Quentin Bryce and Anne Summers who were both sitting in the front row was DEEPLY intimidating 😅).

On this day, forty years ago, the 1984 S*x Discrimination Act was passed. Susan Ryan was the driving force behind the Act.

I’m a big believer that Australian history has been shaped by lots of small moments that have added up. But then occasionally, you get a big moment, like the S*x Discrimination Act, that completely changes the course of Australian history.

I don’t think enough people realise just how much the Act and the work of Susan Ryan have shaped their experience in the workplace.

I genuinely could not think of a more deserving person to be immortalised in bronze, and our whole team looks forward to sharing inspiring Susan’s story on many future tours to come ❤️

P.s. For those of you who don’t know much about Susan Ryan, don’t stress, as I’m going to make a reel (soonish) sharing why she’s such a badass.

26/07/2024

Eleri’s badass tour from this morning 💕✨

There’s still time to book if you want to join us on a tour this weekend 🫶🏽

While there are no spots left for Saturday 🥲, there are a few left for both tours running on Sunday🕵🏽‍♀️

18/07/2024

Zev spent most today recording the first of ‘Q***rs Past’, our soon to be released q***r history of Canberra podcast! 🏳️‍⚧️🏳️‍🌈

To be honest, it has been a JOURNEY to get here and at one point we thought the entire podcast was cursed.

So we are feeling extremely grateful to have finally begun the process of recording 🙏🏽😅😂

P.s. We’re running our Pride in the Capital: Canberra’s LGBTQIA+ History tour this weekend if you’re keen to get a sneak peak of some of the stories we’re going to share (+ quite a few we won’t share!) 😉

17/07/2024

Technically it is true that she did not shape history on a random light pole in Canberra’s inner north 😂😅

For some context, our team + tour guests have placed these stickers all around Canberra 🕵🏽‍♀️🕺🏻

If you ever spot one around, please please please let us know! 💖

Huge shout-out to Tash for spotting this one 👀🫡

P.S. Can we have more unintentionally funny counter messages written in sharpie on poles and fewer misogynistic emails, please? 🙏🏽

15/07/2024

Super excited to announce that I've been selected as a 2024 Tomorrow Maker!

I almost didn't put in an application because I was in the middle of my research trip around Australia and had extremely limited access to service (I ended up quite manically writing and submitting it from a roadhouse on the Nullarbor).

I am currently feeling very grateful I took the time out of my trip to do so because, oh my goodness, I feel so incredibly privileged to have the opportunity to learn with and from such an amazing group of people.

I am genuinely so excited to be part of the program and to use it to scale She Shapes History 💗✨

xx
Sita

What better way to start your week than with the story of Sita Sargeant, our 2024 Tomorrow Maker!

Sita's social enterprise offers engaging walking tours in Canberra that share the stories of women and q***r people who have shaped history. Her aim is for guests to leave with a better understanding of the past, thereby engaging more thoughtfully with the present.

After spending seven months traveling around Australia writing a women's history travel guide, Sita now aims to expand her tours to every Australian capital city and run educational programs, making history relevant, accessible, and unforgettable for all Australians.

Learn more about She Shapes History 👉 https://www.sheshapeshistory.com.au/

👉 Keep an eye out for another inspiring 2024 Tomorrow Maker story tomorrow!

13/07/2024

If you’ve been wondering why we’ve been a bit quieter on social media this is why! 💗

A 26-year-old Canberra woman has just returned from an epic, solo driving trip (with her dog) around Australia, collecting stories about forgotten women

12/07/2024

Eleri took the absolutely wonderful learning team at Museum of Australian Democracy at Old Parliament House on a private Badass Women of Canberra tour this afternoon!

If this is something you'd like to organise for your team or friends, please do send us a message! It's genuinely SO EASY to arrange a private tour (and we absolutely love running them).

All you need to do is pick a time/date (we can usually make whatever date/time you pick as long as you give us at least two weeks' notice work), and then we'll either send you an invoice for the whole group or provide a link for people to book individually.

Shoot us a DM or email if this is something you're interested in ❤️

04/07/2024

Last week, I made a video about Captain Charles Fremantle, and within 48 hours, the mayor of Fremantle slid into my DMs.

Today, I had the absolute pleasure of spending two and a half hours with Hannah and her hilarious and incredibly smart 13-year-old daughter. We grabbed a coffee and then wandered around Old Parliament House, where I shared some of my favourite stories about the women who had shaped history in that building.

I was really impressed & flattered that Hannah took time out of her absolutely packed trip to Canberra to meet with me.

Hannah wanted to learn more about why I started She Shapes History, why I was looking into Fremantle’s history [I’m writing a women’s history travel guide to Australia], and how Fremantle could better highlight its incredible women’s history [watch this space!].

We spoke about why we should be having a national conversation about the names of places across the country and the message it sends when men like Charles Fremantle get cities named after them, especially when violence against women is only getting worse.

We also discussed why this process of renaming is harder and longer than we’d sometimes like.

When I posted that video, I never expected it would lead to spending two and a half hours hanging out with the extremely lovely and down-to-earth mayor of Fremantle.

I never expected to hear that Hannah was showing my video to others in the council to see if they knew about who their city was named after.

It’s a great reminder that sometimes it just takes one person to articulate the problem and raise their voice to inspire others to do the same.

I really hope the conversation Fremantle is having about its name will inspire other towns and cities in Australia, many of which are also named after some pretty questionable men, to do the same.

And to help get the conversation going, I’m happy to keep making reels sharing the stories of the questionable people these towns are named after!

23/06/2024

For everyone who’s recently discovered us through one of our reels, this is a quick post to say that we do more than just create content 🤯.

We run walking tours in Canberra, sharing how women and q***r people have shaped history 😎.

We run public tours on Fridays, Saturdays, and Sundays, and private tours whenever works for you ✌🏽

Hopefully, we’ll catch you IRL on one soon (we save all our best stories for the tour 😇). And until then, please enjoy our semi-regular, lightly unhinged historical content 🫡.

P.S. If you let us know where you’re from, we’ll drop a reel sharing some hidden women’s history from there sometime in the nearish future 🌚

20/05/2024

Found this while doing some research for our Spies in the Capital: Women in Espionage tour and thought it was too good not to share.

This is a Canberra Times article from Saturday, July 7, 1984, reporting on ASIO's extensive surveillance during the Cold War, detailing how they kept files on over 200,000 Australians, including prominent figures, and how many of these records are now available. It's estimated that today around 500,000 Australians have an ASIO file so the fact that so many are from ASIO's first four years of operation is honestly a bit insane.

Some parts that jumped out to me:

“The Australian Security Intelligence Organisation (ASIO) had files on more than 200,000 Australians by 1953, only four years after it was established. The card index containing these names, though not necessarily the accompanying material amplifying cryptic but often adverse comments on the cards, has now been lodged at the Australian Archives and is available for public inspection.”

“A number of journalists of the time are on record, chiefly because of their publication of leaked sensitive material, although one now-retired Canberra journalist is recorded simply because he subscribed to the Communist newspaper Tribune while in Darwin during the war.” [!!!!]

“Among other organizations on whom the security services had some record were the Australian American Association, the Australia New Zealand Association for the Advancement of Science, the Australian Aborigines League, and the Aborigines Progressive Association, as well as most trade unions and student organizations.”

“The 200,000 individual files are based on system cards, about 1,200 to a box, alphabetically sorted. Each card records a name and lists documents held by the organization on them, without necessarily making clear the nature or content of ASIO information or assessments.”

17/05/2024

So, you might have noticed that we’ve been a lot less active on social media lately. That’s mostly because the sheer amount of really hateful comments, DMs, and emails was starting to get to me. 😮‍💨

To be super frank, not being on social media has been pretty terrible for our booking numbers. Despite knowing this, it’s taken me a few weeks to build back up my will to post again (and this is something I used to love doing).

I’m going to try to be more regular with posting, but if I vanish again, it’s not because we aren’t running tours; it’s because I’ve hit my (very high) limit, completely cracked it, and deleted the app. So please keep coming on tours even if I’m not posting regularly! 😅

And I guess the silver lining to getting these kinds of messages DAILY is that I am reminded every single day why what we do matters, and it makes me feel driven to scale what we’re doing and to do more of it.

Also, I don’t usually respond to these kinds of DMs and comments, but this person took the time to go to our website and submit an inquiry, so I thought I’d take the time to respond. I also wanted to give a little insight into the kinds of comments, DMs, and emails we get and how I would ideally like to respond to all of them (if I wasn’t getting so many).

xx
Sita

P.S. Our bookings (unsurprisingly) have taken a hit because I spent a month not posting anything—so if you’ve been meaning to book but haven’t, now is a great time to book or purchase a gift card! 🫶🏽💗

23/04/2024

This Saturday is the last time we'll be running our Love in the Capital: The Love Stories that Shaped the Nation tour, and there are only 6 spots left!

We've had an absolute blast running this tour as part of the ACT Heritage Festival and have received some pretty amazing feedback from those who've joined us.

But alas, like many of Canberra’s iconic political partnerships, this too must come to an end. Hopefully, we'll catch you on it before it does! You can book in to do the tour via our website.