Mary Neal was a remarkable woman.

Born in 1860, the daughter of a Birmingham button manufacturer, she came to London in her 20s to ‘serve the poor.’ As a Sister of Mercy at the West London Mission she took charge of an evening club for sewing girls and so began a life of adventure as a social reformer, a champion of working class women and a folk revivalist.

A journalist, a suffragette, a radical arts practitioner, a magistrate and an adopted mother of two boys, she died in 1944, at the age of 84. Daily life’ said her life-long friend, Emmeline Pethick-Lawrence, was ‘more interesting when she was present’.

The Mary Neal Project unpacks an old box to create something new: a celebratory encounter between contemporary arts and English folk practitioners to look at tradition with fresh eyes. The Project celebrates Mary’s life and the legacy of her work, bringing to light the ‘undertold’ chapter of the Espérance Club ‘experiment’ and its role as instigator in the English Folk Revival.

A chance moment of debate around tradition and creativity, during the London International Festival of Theatre in 1993, led to Mary Neal’s papers arriving into the hands of her great great niece, Lucy Neal, The Project becomes the catalyst for returning Mary’s story - and her papers - to the public realm.