An amazing turnout at the Islington WI's first meeting left president Katie Best gob-smacked. She tells marmaLADYa.com all about it

You’ve probably heard of the Women’s Institute through your mum or granny, or remember all the press about WI members posing nude for calendars, immortalised in the film Calendar Girls starring Julie Walters. You may be a bit bemused and dismissive of the whole idea and think that it’s not for you. But think again, more than 50 women, with an average age of 30, turned up for the first WI meeting in Islington.

Initiated by two friends, Katie Best (pictured) and Ali Budjanovcanin, both PhD students at King’s College London, the meeting was a resounding success. So much so that the medium-sized room they had booked in a local pub was bursting to the seams with local gals perching on the edge of seats and cross-legged on the floor.

“I was gob-smacked at the number of people that turned up. We would have been happy if it’d been only 10!” says Katie.

The evening was a culmination of a lot of work all crammed into the space of two months. “I was sitting around with Ali one night and we were thinking that there wasn’t anything out there for young women. There’s the Fulham WI, but it’s so far away. And I’d been to the Covent Garden WI quite a lot, but I wanted something closer,” explains Katie. “We started to think about what it would mean to have one in Islington. It’s very urban and cultural. A lot of people around here work in the media. We wanted to do something that was really going to appeal to those kind of women.”

The next thing they knew, having contacted WI headquarters, they had been persuaded to set the new branch up as soon as possible. “We suddenly had loads to do! Organise a venue, hand out flyers, put up posters. But before we knew it the first meeting was planned,” says Katie.

And what a meeting, nobody could have been prepared for the number of women and the buzz as everyone got chatting about the things they’d be interested in doing. “I’d describe the N1 members as very clued up – there was a lot of interest in environment and ethical issues,” says Katie. “And everyone was very fashionable! We’re definitely the WI with the best shoes! But just as popular as fashion and make-up were things like gardening, DIY and car maintenance. It was exciting how diverse a range of interests everybody had.”

The WI is renowned for bringing communities together, and this is just what Katie hopes the new NI WI will do. “I think it will help build a sense of community. There are really good communities in Stoke Newington and Highbury, but less so in Islington. It’ll be nice for people to be able to pop out and bump into someone from their WI group,” says Katie. “I think there’s a real feeling that people don’t want to live in a soulless place, they want to live somewhere they know real people doing real things, and not just be ships passing in the night.”

With 42 signed up members, they’re making a good start. So what next? “We’re going to start with monthly meetings,” says Katie. “We’ve got gardening, vintage fashion and wine-tasting planned. We want to cover as wide a range of interests as possible in the next twelve months, lots of environmental and campaigning issues. It’d be nice to be actively involved in the WI campaign for the trafficking of women, excess packaging and climate chaos. But right now the major issue is to try and find a bigger venue!”

For further info or to find out where the next meeting will be held, contact n1wi@yahoo.co.uk, telephone 07784 211212, or log on to www.myspace.com/n1wi