black london

In fact, the bronze is of an anonymous and unknown African-Caribbean woman holding aloft a baby. The sculpture called, The Bronze Woman, will be a memorial to the Caribbean community and especially women.

Do you think the sculpture should be of an actual black woman rather than an anonymous and generic figure? What about Diane Abbott, the first black woman to be elected to the House of Commons? Or Mary Seacole, a nurse who treated soldiers from both sides of the Crimean War, and whose reputation during her lifetime rivalled that of Florence Nightingale?

Let us know what you think:

The Bronze Woman

When the statue is erected in south London later this spring, it will become the first of a black woman to be displayed publicly anywhere in England.

The Bronze Woman sculpture is based on a poem of the same name by Cecile  Nobrega, a writer born in Guyana in 1919 who has lived in Stockwell, south London, for the last 30 years. The poet has campaigned for ten years to have the project come to fruition.

In addition to being the home of Cecile Nobrega, Stockwell is notable as the place where the first large group of West Indian immigrants settled in the UK after the Second World War after disembarking from the Empire Windrush ship.

The Sculptors

It has taken 10 years for the statue to get the go ahead and was initially worked on by the internationally renowned sculptor Ian Walters, who also created the statue of Nelson Mandela in Parliament Square. Walters managed to complete a two foot high model of The Bronze Woman before he died in August 2006.

After Walters' death, the organisation behind the project, Presentation, a charity for local communities, approached Aleix Barbat, a final year sculpture student at Heatherley's School of Fine Art - London's oldest independent art school. Mr Barbat had just won the prestigious Tiranti Prize from the Society of Portrait Sculptors.

Barbat, 30, who has been working on the giant clay figures for the last six months, said, "It's been hugely exciting to take on, and to add something of my own to a work started by Ian Walters - who by any standards was a great sculptor. The mother and child figures represent the struggle of black women across the ages as well as their spirit and courage."

The three metre high sculpture has just been completed in bronze and will now be cast in Bronze before it is unveiled in the Spring.

Your Views

No, the Bronze Woman should not be a specific British West Indian, or British Black woman. It should be generic and be "a woman of the Caribbean" who has experienced the woes, and joys expressed in the poem. To use a specific person as suggested in the article would only be a monument to that person, not to the whole of Caribbean womanhood - past and present, as represented by the proposed statue

Elizabeth Yates

It is a nice statue but it is anonymous and does not really represent anything to do with Stockwell. I know West Indians from the Windrush stayed in the deep level shelters but why not have a statue commemorating that.

I would like to have seen a really decent permanent bronze statue of Violette Szabo the World War two heroine who lived in Stockwell just around the corner in Burnley Road.

An extremely brave woman who gave her young life for our freedom in the fight against the greatest evil Europe has ever seen.

Duncan Rimmer