getting attention
Current media coverage, active campaigns, public involvement and creative interventions, in the debate that has been running since at least 1952.
Inspiration
If you are thinking of starting a campaign for a statue or memorial honouring women and would like to find some wonderful inspiration for ways of getting attention just check the tactics used in campaigns like those for Mary Wollstonecraft and Emmeline Pankhurst.
What a brainwave to project Mary Wollstonecraft's image on to the Houses of Parliament, a great way to get her in the public eye.
And imagine the power of organising a public vote like the one in Manchester to start the conversation and get a real sense from the wider public about who they truly value.
The energetic, effective campaign, led by engineer Jane Priston, to celebrate the astonishing achievements of pioneering aviator Amy Johnson resulted in not one but two beautiful, lively statues.
So that’s a thought to bear in mind; is there more than one place that is significant in the life of the person or group that you are campaigning for? Once the sculptor’s work is done, more than one cast can be made. We have such a lot of ground to make up in terms of the recognition of women that this is a strategy worth considering. Amy was important both to the people of Hull where she was born and in Herne Bay where she died.
Another clever feature of these statues is that even without a sound component they still allow Amy’s inspiring words to reach us through engravings of her words on the surface of the statue.
Changing Attitudes
And for some food for thought from the USA take a look at the Moving On page for the Millie Dresselhaus video. Attitudes are changing everywhere.
The clever "Wifies" - www.wifie.org.uk - in Edinburgh made life size portraits (above) of the women they wanted to see honoured, then set them around the city: a real call to action.
Sheffield City Council used the “Just Giving” site as part of their fundraising efforts. They attracted 295 supporters and exceeded their goal of raising £150,000 and actually got £163,166. The campaign reached a highly motivated group of givers. One of the very many supporters who donated said she had made her donation:
“In memory of our lovely brave Mother, Mary Gilbert (Nee Broomhead) who worked in Munitions at Stocksbridge Steel Works during the Second World War. Remembering too, all these ladies, from both wars.”
With the extra money raised Sheffield City Council were able to strike commemorative medals to be presented to the surviving steel factory workers.
Victory! Mayor of London Sadiq Khan agrees to suffragette statue
May 12, 2016
Above photographs show Sadiq Quan, Caroline-Criado Perez and Emma Watson.
Sadiq Khan has agreed to erect a statue of a suffragette in central London.
The news comes after a campaign by feminist activist Caroline-Criado Perez and Telegraph Women, which launched on Monday this week. More than 70,000 people signed a petition, asking for a statue of a suffragette to be placed in Parliament Square by 2018 – a century after women got the vote.
Currently, there are 11 statues outside Parliament Square, all of which are men.
Criado-Perez published an open letter in Telegraph Women this week, signed by a group of powerful women – including Emma Watson, Naomi Harris and Sandi Toksvig –as well as MPs, businesswoman and baronesses.
It called on Khan to honour his promise to be a “proud feminist” in City Hall, by placing a statue of a woman outside the Houses of Parliament. (Read the full letter on The Telegraph).
View and sign the petition at: change.org
Read more on: The Telegraph
Wifie: Women in Focus in Edinburgh
May 10, 2016
As part of the Audacious Women Festival in Edinburgh, some new "statues" appeared around the city on International Women's Day 2016 of some of the Scots women who deserve celebrating.
Wifie, Women in Focus in Edinburgh, a women's photography collective, ran a photography workshop and produced life-size images to bring some of these historic and audacious women into the light, among them were Muriel Spark, renowned author and Mary Somerville, astronomer and mathematician; Scottish women with a great legacy.
Wifie ask the interesting question "Who has control over the imagery of women today and throughout history and how are women like ... Mary Somerville represented or remembered?
Edinburgh has more statues of animals than women - there are 2 statues of named women and one anonymous woman and child, compared with 5 dogs and one bear!
See more at: facebook.com/Wifie-Women-In-Focus-In-Edinburgh-181445711928407
Sylvia Pankhurst: shunned, snubbed, now to be honoured at last
March 6, 2016
The suffragette’s socialist ideals caused a rift with her mother and sister.
Photograph: Heritage Images/Getty Images
In life, they became personally and politically estranged. And decades after their deaths, the three Pankhurst women who did so much to win universal suffrage continue to be divided.
While Emmeline Pankhurst, the founder of the suffragette movement, and her eldest daughter Christabel are commemorated by a statue and plaque at the entrance to Victoria Tower Gardens on the south-west corner of the houses of parliament, no such honour has been bestowed on Sylvia, who broke with her family over her opposition to the first world war and pursuit of socialist ideals.
The House of Lords – an institution Pankhurst vowed to tear down in a coming revolution – has over the years repeatedly blocked proposals for a memorial near parliament, despite strong support from figures including the former Commons speaker Betty Boothroyd, and the granting of planning permission by Westminster council.
But while there seems little hope of a statue of the radical pioneer joining her mother and sister in Westminster, an unlikely partnership is seeking to honour her on a plot a few miles east.
A bronze model of the statue has already been made by the late sculptor Ian Walters, who was also responsible for the statue of Nelson Mandela in Parliament Square.
(See the maquette on the results page.)
Clerkenwell has been chosen as an alternative to Westminster as it was in the east of London that Sylvia sought to unite the women’s movement with that of the working class, after being expelled from her mother’s Women’s Social and Political Union and forming the East London Federation of Suffragettes.
Read more on The Guardian
Success!
March 1, 2016
Brilliant campaigning by the womanchesterstatue.orgfor a statue to honour Mrs Pankhurst has been ongoing for years and in 2016 finally reached its goal and her statue is due to be up by 2019.
Photo by Edward Gooch/Getty Images
She will be the first woman to be honoured in a statue in Manchester for 100 years. The last woman being, unsurprisingy, the ubiquitous Queen Victoria.
Today’s campaigners in Manchester have been resourceful and determined. Thankfully they have not been driven to the lengths required by Pankhurst and the women of the suffrage movement to make their voices heard.
Mary On The Green
Feb. 25, 2016
By 2015 the campaign to honour Mary Wollstonecraft, one of the country's foremost feminist thinkers, had been attracting media coverage for some time from the Guardian to the Telegraph and on the BBC. See maryonthegreen.org for all this coverage and their great video with Melvyn Bragg, Kirsty Wark and Shami Chakrabarti.
Photo by Neil Wissink
On a broader note, the site estimates that the ratio of men to women in London's public statues is ten to one... Not what you would call a fair representation of women, given that women are 50% of the population.
Woman's Hour Feature
Nov. 9, 2015
Listen to Terri Bell-Halliwell, the woman behind www.invisiblewomen.org.uk discussing the project on Woman's Hour, Mon 9 Nov 2015.
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