International Women's Day: Free Talk FREE
New Monuments for Women
Justine Simons, Deputy Mayor for Culture and the Creative Industries, leads a free discussion on female monuments for the 21st century.
What to expect
In the UK, there is a severe shortage of civic monuments dedicated to the lives and achievements of women. It’s believed that public statues of men outnumber women by 16 to one.
Last year, this came under renewed scrutiny during the commemoration festivities around 100 years of women’s suffrage. To redress this imbalance, several new statues of influential British women were commissioned and unveiled, including the much-anticipated monument to Millicent Fawcett in Westminster’s Parliament Square designed by the artist Gillian Wearing.
Public monuments stand as important symbols of women's contributions to history, but in an era of social media and #MeToo, how relevant are they to young people today? In what other ways can we memorialise our most treasured heroines?
Join a group of designers, thinkers and artists for a discussion on female monuments for the 21st century.
Speakers
Justine Simons OBE
Justine Simons OBE, is Deputy Mayor for Culture and the Creative Industries. During her time at City Hall she established the Fourth Plinth as a global exemplar for public sculpture. As Deputy Mayor she is pioneering a cultural policy which includes Creative Enterprise Zones as dedicated areas to support artists, a new London Borough of Culture Award and the UK's first Night Czar. Justine chairs the commission that put the first ever statue of a woman on London's Parliament Square.
Anna Minton
Anna Minton is the author of Ground Control: Fear and Happiness in the 21st Century City and Big Capital: Who is London For? She is also Reader in Architecture at the University of East London and Programme Leader of MRes Architecture: Reading the neoliberal city.
Pooja Agrawal
Pooja Agrawal is Co-founder of Public Practice, and works in the GLA Regeneration Team. Pooja is a trustee of the Museum of Architecture, member of DSE Review Panel, a mentor at FLUID, an Associate Lecturer at Central Saint Martins and a Fellow at the Institute of Innovation & Public Purpose.
Sokari Douglas Camp
Sokari Douglas Camp is an artist born in Buguma, Rivers State, Nigeria. Her work is in permanent collections worldwide and she has had more than 40 solo shows. In 2003, Sokari was shortlisted for the Trafalgar Square Fourth Plinth in 2003. In 2005 she was awarded a CBE in recognition of her services to art. In 2012 All the World is Now Richer, a memorial to commemorate the abolition of slavery was exhibited in The House of Commons and in St Paul’s Cathedral in 2014.
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