Rachel Carter and the Legacy Makers
Nominee Profile
Location: Nottingham
Standing In This Place, created by sculptor Rachel Carter & community history group the Legacy Makers.
Standing In This Place is a community-led sculpture project, from community, artist and academic perspectives, drawing on ideas of spatial connection, nature and place-making. Now installed in the ‘Green Heart’ redevelopment of central Nottingham’s former Broad Marsh shopping centre, the statue represents a clear act and symbol of challenge, disruption and resilience, contesting the dominant narrative about who and what gets to be remembered, valued and accepted as history and culture in public space.
By foregrounding the overlooked global history of Nottingham’s textile industry it disrupts conventional accounts of trade and industrial development in Britain. It brings together two women, an enslaved woman of African descent and a white female mill worker, who likely would never have met in person but were intimately linked through the enslaved-produced raw cotton supplies from the Americas used in the city. It celebrates the resilience of these women, whilst acknowledging the complex and contentious social histories rooted in their identities based on race, class, status and gender.
The statue’s inclusion in a public park places Nottingham at the forefront of historic female recognition; and makes Nottingham a regional, national and global leader in acknowledging the significant contribution women have made to the British economy and society in their roles as enslaved workers in the Americas and Caribbean and as factory workers in industrial Britain.
Their 21st century descendants have connected across these boundaries and problematic histories, championing the women's stories, negotiating their ancestors’ right and entitlement to Stand in this Place. The women emerge through breaking earth, suggestive of a rebirth symbolically reinforced through the statue’s placement in the ‘Green Heart’ park, in an act of reparative commemoration.
Standing In This Place is a community-led sculpture project, from community, artist and academic perspectives, drawing on ideas of spatial connection, nature and place-making. Now installed in the ‘Green Heart’ redevelopment of central Nottingham’s former Broad Marsh shopping centre, the statue represents a clear act and symbol of challenge, disruption and resilience, contesting the dominant narrative about who and what gets to be remembered, valued and accepted as history and culture in public space.
By foregrounding the overlooked global history of Nottingham’s textile industry it disrupts conventional accounts of trade and industrial development in Britain. It brings together two women, an enslaved woman of African descent and a white female mill worker, who likely would never have met in person but were intimately linked through the enslaved-produced raw cotton supplies from the Americas used in the city. It celebrates the resilience of these women, whilst acknowledging the complex and contentious social histories rooted in their identities based on race, class, status and gender.
The statue’s inclusion in a public park places Nottingham at the forefront of historic female recognition; and makes Nottingham a regional, national and global leader in acknowledging the significant contribution women have made to the British economy and society in their roles as enslaved workers in the Americas and Caribbean and as factory workers in industrial Britain.
Their 21st century descendants have connected across these boundaries and problematic histories, championing the women's stories, negotiating their ancestors’ right and entitlement to Stand in this Place. The women emerge through breaking earth, suggestive of a rebirth symbolically reinforced through the statue’s placement in the ‘Green Heart’ park, in an act of reparative commemoration.