We met River Isaac, our Child Ambassador, during the period of COVID lockdown when she asked us to help her teacher to organise an on-line sculpture class about Mary Clarke for Balfour School in Brighton. This we did and subsequently asked River to become our first Child Ambassador for the Mary Clarke Statue Appeal. Since then she has helped us with fundraising events and lobbied councillors…
On 7th April, we launched a post-pandemic appeal we are naming RaiseMary1000, which was inspired by writer Peter James, our newest Patron. We have received many hundreds of smaller donations, but only a few larger ones. Just recently we were grateful to receive two separate donations of £1,000, one of which was from Peter. It occurred to us that if we could identify just thirty five people to…
Thank you to ITV Meridian News and Charlotte Wilkins for their coverage this weekend of the wonderful fundraising efforts of Izzy and Sophia Kilburn, our most recently appointed Junior Ambassadors. If you haven’t already seen it, please take a moment to watch the film. You can find the link below. As we reported earlier, the twins have been fundraising to erect blue plaques in Brighton, to…
Twins Izzy and Sophia Kilburn are our two most recent Child Ambassadors. They recently celebrated their 13th birthday and very generously, asked family and friends to consider a donation to the Mary Clarke Statue Appeal instead of birthday presents. They raised a hugely impressive £95. We are so grateful to the girls and their parents and hope they had a wonderful birthday. The twins are,…
We are pleased to announce that 12 year old twin sisters Isabel (Izzy) and Sophia Kilburn have become our most recent Child Ambassadors. They live in Ovingdean and attend Brighton College Prep School. The girls love music and are accomplished young sportswomen. Izzy focusses on hockey, while Sophia prefers netball and, in particular, cricket. Sophia plays cricket for the Brighton College boys first team. The…
Our Appeal has attracted widespread community backing and has the cross party support of the City Council. It has a number of prominent Patrons, whose support we are immensely proud and honoured to call our own. However, we think our most recent Patron is probably the most famous. We are delighted that the best selling author Peter James has agreed to serve as a Patron…
This Appeal is pledged to remember 18th November, the anniversary of ‘Black Friday’, the notorious day in 1910 when three hundred suffragettes were attacked outside Parliament as they tried to petition Prime Minister Asquith. Three women died as a result of the violence that day, the first of whom was Mary Clarke. Another key commemorative date for us is the 25th November. This is the…
The Statue Appeal’s primary focus is to fundraise for the statue of Mary Clarke and following the difficulties posed by COVID and lockdown, we plan to redouble our efforts to raise the £35,000 we still need. However, the Appeal’s purposes are broader than just the achievement of a statue. An important aspect of our purpose has always been to use the commemoration of Mary’s life as…
We are proud to announce that the Mary Clarke Statue Appeal now has its first Child Ambassador. She is River Isaac who is 8 years old and in year four at Balfour Primary School in Brighton. We first came across River during lockdown at the height of the pandemic, when she and her mother Paula contacted our chosen sculptor Denise Dutton to ask if she…
Peter Barratt from Leicester is a great grandson of suffragette Alice Hawkins and has been an inspiration to our Appeal. From 2012 he co-led a fund raising campaign for a statue of Alice and after several years of hard work and effort this proved successful. On February 4th 2018 a statue of Alice was unveiled in the Leicester market place and has been credited with…