Ruth Hope Crow

Crow was born in Ballarat, Victoria, on 14 September 1916. Crow died on 9 April 1999 at Horsham, Victoria. == Employment ==

From 1937 to 1943 Ruth worked as a waitress, cook, assistant dietician, joint manager of a tearoom with her husband (Observatory Tea Rooms and adjoining camping ground in the Dandenong Ranges) and manager of a factory canteen. As a married woman, she could only find work by using her maiden name and working in areas where people didn't know her. From 1943 to 1944 Crow was secretary-organiser of the Brunswick Childcare Centres. These were the first federally funded wartime child care centres. From 1946 to 1948 Crow was Club Leader at the Exhibition Youth Centre (EYC) and Education Field Officer for the Victorian Association of Youth Clubs. EYC was a community recreation scheme located in South Fitzroy. From 1953 to 1969 Crow taught secondary school Home Economics. In the late 1960s Crow was a freelance columnist with at the Northern Advertiser. During the 1970s Crow had similar casual employment with the Melbourne Times. Sometimes she wrote under the pen name 'Una Voce'. == Political activism and community service ==

From 1936 to 1996 Crow was a political activist. Crow and her husband were partners in both life and activism up until his death in 1988, after which Crow continued alone. Crow said that her views changed greatly from 1933, when she was one of thousands of Australians greeting the visiting German battleship Koln because it flew the Nazi flag, to 1936 when she joined the Communist Party. She was influenced by Egon Kisch's protest against Nazism, and the attempt to exclude Kisch from Australia in 1934. In 1936 Crow was secretary on the Student Council, and was delegate representing them to a student conference on war and fascism called 'Youth What Next?' From 1949 to 1954 Crow was involved with organisations which offered leisure time activities for children such as dance, drama, sports, and music. and in 1952 Secretary of the Adult Advisory Committee of the Junior Eureka League in Melbourne. With Maurie Crow she wrote "Plans for Melbourne Part 1, 2, and 3". Crow was one of the main people responsible for publishing a monthly newsletter on urban issues called "Irregular", and later called "Ecoso Exchange". In 1977 Crow was involved in the book "Seeds for Change – Creatively Confronting, the Energy Crisis". In the late 1970s Crow participated in the Melbourne City Council Consultation on Children's Services. Crow was arrested for graffitiing a wall in Melbourne with the words "No scrap iron for Japan". Crow was a prominent member of the Union of Australian Women. == Awards ==

In 1972 Crow, with her husband, was jointly awarded a Robin Boyd Information Award by the Victorian Chapter of the Royal Australian Institute of Architects for 'consistently valuable and perspective contributions to the literature of planning issues in Melbourne' for her work on "Plan for Melbourne Parts 1, 2 and 3", "Irregular", and elsewhere. A plaque in the Royal Park commemorates Crow and her husband. In 2008 Crow was inducted into the Victorian Honour Roll of Women. == The Crow Collection ==

In 1990 Crow donated her personal papers, approximately 2000 books and 700 pamphlets, to Victoria University. The collection of working papers and printed material (both published and unpublished) relate to the campaign work of Crow and her husband, including Crow's work with women and children in Brunswick during World War II, and Maurie Crow's in the Clerk's Union, and the pioneering work they did from the 1960s onwards in relation to public participation in urban planning, building neighbourhood communities and creating a sustainable future. Many of the publications of Ruth and Maurie Crow were digitised in the 2011 ASHER funded Crow Papers Digitisation Project. The Crow Collection has been extended by donations from Mannie Biederberg, Alvie Booth, Jack Cotter, Bert Davies, Lloyd Edmonds, Ken Gott, Rivkah Mathews, Joyce Nicholson, John Reeves, Percy Rogers, and Colin Watson. In February 1991 the Crow Collection Association was founded. The Association published one of Australia's earliest environmental issues journals, the Ecoso Exchange Newsletter. The 2011 Crow Papers Digitisation Project made available many of the issues of the Ecoso Exchange (1973–1999) and its predecessor, Irregular (1967–1972). In 1996 the Crow Collection Association was involved in the Ideas Exchange Project which took up the theme of the 1995 Senate Inquiry, 'What Sort of Society Do You Want Australia To Be?' To commemorate Ruth Crow's death in April 1999 the Crow Collection Association held a memorial celebration of Ruth's life at the North Melbourne Town Hall on 21 May 1999. This event was attended by over 500 people. At the last meeting of the Crow Collection Association on 25 February 2003 the members in attendance voted in favour of winding up the Association and handing over its remaining assets to Victoria University Library. The Library was entrusted to use these funds to promote research in the subject areas that were of interest to Ruth and Maurie Crow. Funds from the Crow Collection Association trust were used to compile an archive of Ruth Crow's papers in 2004. In 2011 Federal Government funding under the ASHER program was granted to VU Library to undertake a digitisation project of significant unpublished and out of print material from the Crow Papers. ==References==