US Edition 
Meet the many faces of the Women's Institute
Over the past 100 years, the WI has transformed from its rural roots and this year is even making an appearance at Glastonbury. These are the modern faces of the Women's Institute
On Thursday, the members of the Women’s Institute will gather at London’s Royal Albert Hall to celebrate its centenary. Once a rural organisation set up to encourage women to farm after their husbands had left to fight in the First World War, now it has spread to every town and city and become a powerful campaigning force for good.
The WI currently has 212,000 members in around 6,600 branches across the country, even including the Queen, who is president of the Sandringham branch and will be in attendance at the Royal Albert Hall. It is rumoured the Duchess of Cambridge might also soon become a member.
Nowadays, of course, the WI still makes jam and cakes. But branches also take welding lessons, run food banks and, this summer, will be making their first ever appearance at Glastonbury.
These are the different faces of the Women’s Institute who reflect its transformation - and durability - over the course of a century.
The brass band
Rebecca Cobb, 39, (right) Aisling Creedan, 27, Tea and Tarts WI
I founded the branch in 2010 and since then we’ve done everything from welding and car maintenance- we learnt about a combustion engine – to axe throwing. We’ve also done twerking and had a dominatrix come and talk to us about her work, which was very interesting.
We’ve got 80-odd members, the youngest is 24 and the oldest is a pensioner. It’s becoming more common to do things out of the ordinary now – almost a cliché. Our official meeting is once a month but to be honest we’re doing two or three things a week.
I thought it would be fitting in our centenary year to follow in the musical traditions of the WI and set up a brass band and learn to play Jerusalem. Of the 25 of us who have formed the band, a few had played when they were children but were pretty much beginners. The rest of us were complete amateurs. When we first started playing the sound was dreadful but we’ve been practising for 20 weeks.. We’re not brilliant now but we can play Jerusalem - you can recognise the notes.
We’re performing at the Albert Memorial opposite the Royal Albert Hall on the day of the AGM. If the Queen comes over and has a listen that would make our day.
The WI has always been fairly radical. If you always get a big group of women together there are hundreds of opinions. We will carry on the brass band – although we haven’t had many bookings, yet.
The campaigner
Mehreen Umar, 31, East Dulwich WI
I’m campaigns manager for East Dulwich WI and also organise food bank donations to the Southwark foodbank. Every month we ask the lady in charge what they need, she sends me a list and members bring donations. There's been a great response from members, especially at Christmas when we helped pack food hampers for each family to receive
I first joined the WI a year and a half ago. I really like knitting and crocheting, baking, all the home making things, so I thought the WI would be a good place to do it. It was nothing like I imagined it to be. I didn't realise that they get involved in the community and do so much campaigning.
I just couldn't believe that people couldn't afford food, or had to choose between food and heating in the winter.
We're also campaigning to save honeybees, and voting at the moment to change the government's attitude towards elderly care.
We have a varied age group but most of us are still on the younger side. We've got a waiting list of 60 to 70 people, and 100 members. The last year it's kind of exploded.
The Royal connection
Dorothy Pulsford-Harris, 70, Anmer WI
I wrote to Kate personally as a president of our branch. We sent her a copy of our programme and said if she would like to become a member we would be absolutely delighted. I had a very nice letter back from her private secretary saying she had been interested to receive the programme and if they wanted further information they would contact us. She hasn’t been in touch since the birth but she’s got her hands full.
We’re used to the royals being here. Sandringham is only two miles away and Anmer Hall (where the Duke and Duchess of Cambridge live) is in the middle of the village. The Duchess of Kent was a member of our branch when she lived here many years ago. She wasn’t able to come to every meeting but did so when she could.
The Queen Mother was a member of the Sandringham WI and the Queen remains its president. It’s important that members of our royal family are involved in what could be seen as day to day life. We would love to have Kate join, but it’s entirely up to her.
Jam and the rural roots
Julie Clarke, 67, Coverdale WI
We once farmed 2,000 acres but it’s now down to about 50 acres since I lost my husband, Neville, in 2006. My farm is in Coverdale. We have lambs and ewes and every Wednesday I’m out delivering eggs.
Our members in the Dales grow and sell their own produce at the country markets in the same way WI members always have. They sell surplus eggs and of course we still make our own jam and marmalade. In the Dales area around 30 per cent of members come from farming backgrounds, it used to be a lot more than that.
I was 26 when I joined the WI and I've made great friends through it - I can't go anywhere in North Yorkshire without bumping into someone I know.
The WI is a great meeting place, and for people who live in rural areas it is often the only time when they actually get together. It was even more so 30 or 40 years ago when a lot of people didn't drive. It was the place where you'd share news about what was happening on the farm.
The Calendar Girls
Angela Baker (Knowles), 69 (left) and Tricia Stewart, 66, Rylstone and District WI
I’ve been a WI member since 1974 but after the calendar came out I’ve always been known as Miss February. My husband, John Baker, died in 1998 of Non Hodgkin Lymphoma. He had only just reached his 54th birthday.
We did the calendar to raise money for him. He said we would never do it and were all talk, but you don’t say that to a lot of feisty Yorkshire women. That September the girls got together and said are we really going to do this? Well, we did.
The calendar launched on April 12, 1999. That first year we sold 88,000 which was double the real Pirelli calendar. It says a lot for the older woman.
Our last one we did was in 2013. We wanted to end on a high and we didn’t want anyone to think heavens it’s these women again. Also, the props we used to cover ourselves were getting a bit bigger so we thought it was time to stop. But we have raised £4m for leukaemia and lymphoma research.
The WI was thought of as being an older women’s organisation and probably a bit boring but we gave it a new image. A lot of younger women have now joined. They have a good time and realise it’s a great thing to do. You meet a lot of incredible people you wouldn’t normally meet. It’s brilliant.
The Glastonbury goers
Katie Newell, 43 (right) and Vicci Langham, 33, Puriton and District WI
We had been racking our brains about how to take the essence of the WI and bring it into the 21st century without losing any of what we are actually about. Every year across the country WI branches are running tea and cake stalls in village and country shows – we firmly believe you can solve anything over a cup of tea and slice of cake.
We wrote to the Glastonbury organisers asking to be involved and amazingly they have said yes. We’ve done a few small village fetes but never anything on this scale. There will be five of us manning the stall, aged from our mid 30s to our late 70s.
Women across Somerset are currently baking cakes for us to sell at the stall. We estimate it will be 1,000 servings a day which is quite a lot more than usual. I’m baking dozens of fruit cakes.
We will be camping out and enjoying the festival, of course. We’re really looking forward to it.
The women of the WI have always not been afraid of doing things that have sustained and developed Britain over the past 100 years. There’s no question. It’s amazing.