Launched by The Friends of Dulwich Picture Gallery in response to their Insight Lecture Series on Women Artists (2008), South London Women Artists was initially a website created to run for six months for women artists working or living locally in Southwark, Lambeth and Lewisham. evenings for networking for SLWA was so great that Jenny Sweeney and Léonie Cronin developed a strong community of artists from the website and it continued.

Celebrating its 10th anniversary in 2018, the SLWA website continues to o er members the opportunity to post a professional pro le along with images of their work. This online presence ensures that artists have exposure to new audiences as well as increasing public awareness of contemporary art produced by women.

SLWA has run a very effective professional development programme over the last ten years sharing the expertise of members but also inviting women from a range of professions within the art world (artists, writers, lecturers, teachers, publishers, gallerists) who are not SLWA members, to share their expertise.

This programme of professional development has included:

• A wide range of exhibitions designed to extend members’ current practice within a strong independent curatorial framework
• Members’ work is archived through catalogues of exhibitions
• Talks from curators and academics
• Running workshops in local schools, institutions
• Workshops on PR/social media, desktop publishing, website design and managing content
• Feminist book club and lm night
• Studio crits, visits to exhibitions and social evenings for networking