Brighton-based comedian Zoe Lyons has agreed to act as MC on 4th March at our benefit concert “Double Standards”. Like our great singers, Claire Martin and Liane Carroll, she is in huge demand. We are so grateful she is making the time to be there and proud to have her support for the statue of Mary Clarke. Zoe took her first steps down the comedy…
Our chosen sculptor, Denise Dutton, has begun the early painstaking stages of her work. This will result in a small exact bronze model of what will eventually become the statue. Denise has been researching the clothing women of Mary Clarke’s time would have worn. She is already knowledgeable, because she sculpted the statue of suffragette Annie Kenney in Oldham. She has been working with an…
We are very grateful to Independent Councillor Tony Janio of Brighton & Hove City Council. Tony took a Notice of Motion supporting our appeal to the Brighton & Hove Council meeting of 30th January 2020. It gained all-party support, was seconded by Labour Councillor Amanda Grimshaw and was passed unanimously. We are so grateful to the councillors for their support and are sure this will…
Great news. Broadcaster, writer and activist Simon Fanshawe has agreed to join the Mary Clarke Statue Appeal’s group of Patrons. He has already proved himself worth his weight in gold by putting us in touch with Comedian Zoe Lyons and some other famous folk. There’s even a possibility Zoe Lyons may MC our benefit concert on the 4th March at St George’s Church. But more…
Jude Winter, Debs Trethewey & Emilia Ballardini (@ballardinix) from feminist post-punk band Siren (@sirenbrighton) met this weekend to record Jude’s new “Song for Mary”, a tribute to Mary Clarke. It will go public on 12th December, which is General Election Day – and also Mary’s birthday. She was born in 1861. We think it is fitting that this tribute song should be launched on Election Day…
Mary Clarke was the first suffragette to give her life for women’s right to Vote but, there is no public memorial to her anywhere in the UK. Brighton, where she lived and worked, has few memorials for women and no statues other than of Queen Victoria. The Mary Clarke Statue Appeal was set up in late 2018 to fund a statue of Mary Clarke, as…
As seen on Brighton and Hove News by Jean Calder November is the month of remembrance. Last week we remembered the horrors of Kristallnacht and World War. This week our city will commemorate the suffragettes and suffragists, who in 1918 won the right to Vote for 8.4 million women – in many cases sacrificing their livelihoods, their health and in some cases their lives.…
As seen on Brighton and Hove Independent By Jean Calder on 9 March 2018 In 1914, on the eve of world war, the Suffragette leader Emmeline Pankhurst wrote in her autobiography, My Own Story: “The militancy of men, through all the centuries, has drenched the world with blood, and for these deeds of horror and destruction men have been rewarded with monuments, with great songs…