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Transcript from City of Women: creating an interactive map of London’s remarkable women event on 4 March 2022, 11:00 am–12:00 pm
SPEAKERS
Dr Leah Lovett, Dr Duncan Hay, Montaz Marche
Leah Lovett 0:07
Okay, so good morning, and welcome to this talk on the City of Women London project, speaking about creating an interactive map of London's remarkable women. We are delighted to be here in the context of Hope's visit to UCL, and we're grateful to Grand Challenges for the invitation to speak. I also want to thank our funders who are Grand Challenges, as well as the ESPRC and the Centre for Critical Heritage Studies, and our partners Haymarket books, Transport for London, and the Women of the World Festival, and of course, the project leads. I'm going to be introducing the project just giving a bit of background as to how we came to be involved and what it's about. And then I will be handing over to Montaz Marche, who will be speaking about the East London suffragettes and some other suffragettes who were featured on the map, and the ways they've contributed to shape London's past and present.
Finally, we will hear from Duncan Hay, as the creator of the memory mapper Toolkit, which is the open source software that we've used to create our interactive map, giving a bit of background to how that piece of software was created, and how it might be used by anyone here to create your own memory maps. In 2016, Rebecca Solnit wrote an essay, part of which was published in the New York Times and that essay linked gendered experiences of street harassment and violence to the gendering of the urban realm and infrastructure. So she noted that the street she walks in in New York, are predominantly named for men. The example she gives us, Astor Place, which is named for John Jacob Astor and Washington Square, of course for the President, and thinking about how that gendering of space may have quietly invaded her urban imaginary. She says, I can't imagine how I might have conceived of myself and my possibilities if in my formative years, I'd moved through a city where most things were named after women, and many or most of the monuments were of powerful successful, honoured women.
Of course, these sites commemorate only those who were allowed to hold power and live in public. Most American cities are by their nomenclature, mostly white, as well as mostly male. Still, you can imagine. The outcome of this imagining which appeared in the book, Nonstop Metropolis was this map. So this is the first City of Women map which was created for the New York subway, and in this map, Rebecca Solnit, and Joshua Jelly-Schapiro named the stops of the New York subway for a whole array of women from various fields. And the cartography was created by Molly Roy. And in this map, the names were somewhat not arbitrarily entirely, but they weren't, they were kind of allocated somewhat randomly. They weren't, they weren't sort of geographically specifically allocated, but the collective effect is of this network of names of incredible women represented across the space of New York and the infrastructure of New York. So in speaking about this project, Rebecca Solnit referenced this work, which is the Great Bear by the artist Simon Patterson, and this was a project created with Transport for London, which used Harry Beck's iconic Tube map from the 1930s as the basis for a reimagining of the constellations of human endeavour.
So in Simon Patterson's imagining of the tube map, each of the tube lines represents a different area of achievement accomplishment, a different field. So there are footballers and philosophers amongst the various kind of lines represented here. And where the intersections take place, the names chosen for those intersections fulfil the areas of endeavour of both lines. So this is a much more kind of conceptual imagining in terms of placement of names named for Constellation. So, in 2020, having seen this map of New York, that was created in 2016, Emma Watson and Reni Eddo Lodge and Rebecca Solnit, began a conversation that resulted in them putting out a call for public nominations of significant London women. And so through consultation with academics and local historians, activists and specialists across various fields, they were able to summon a long list of names from which the project leads then selected to produce their own intersectional feminist reimagining of London. And like all maps, this is a partial imagining, it's really the imagining of this group of three women. At that time we in CASA, were working on this project using methods of counter mapping, where counter mapping is understood in terms of the positioning of different spatial representations and making space for myriad alternative spatial narratives and imaginaries. So we had been creating the Newham Youth map with young people in Newham as a resource, to share information about spaces that the young people were working with value for other young people to know where they might go and what resources they might access.
And so we were, we were creating this project using the memory map, a toolkit, which Duncan will speak with you about in a little while. And we began a conversation with the City of Women team about the possibility of contributing to their project by creating a living resource, which would as well as having the names represented as in as in the City of Women map in New York, and as in the Great Bear, this living resource would be interactive, it would allow people to explore biographical details going beyond the names to the histories, and the stories about how the women on the map and I should say, sorry, the women and non binary people where non binary people have agreed to be represented in the context of a City of Women map so that those stories and the ways they intersect can be explored through interaction with the digital version of the map, and the people on this map range in historical scope from Boudicca, to contemporary activists and writers in their 20s.
So when we launch we will be launching with full biographies, images, multimedia content for all of the living women, and there will be short biographies for every name on the map. And then further historical and archival content will be released throughout March to celebrate Women's History Month. In the meantime, I'm going to hand over to Montaz who will be sharing a bit more information about the suffragette representation on this map.
Montaz Marche 6:35
Great. Thank you, Leah. Yes, I'm going to talk a little bit about the women who feature on this map. As a part of this project who had the privilege to research and write hundreds of women's histories. Ultimately, we're creating a resource that celebrates iconic women who were in London or from London who trailblazed, who defied gender barriers and achieved major accomplishments that shaped our city. In the first place the creation of a project that centres women, but also considers themes of geography of community of hidden stories and underrepresented industries.
We recognised that we had an opportunity to not only illuminate important narratives, but highlight the diversity in the varieties within women's histories that go unrepresented a narrative that is more reflective of London's past and present. And so we applied this on two fronts. In one way we sought to reconfigure popularised narratives within women's histories to focus on the underrepresented women and organisations and the largest of which being the suffragette movement, one of the most popular the most studied and the most well known women's histories in Britain, particularly the stories of Emmeline Pankhurst and the women's social and political union. Delving deeper into these popular narratives. One of the organisations that we focused on that pioneered women's rights was the East London Federation of suffragettes, and I'll just give a brief overview of their history. It was founded in 1914, separating from the women's social and political union and disbanded in 1924. It was established by Sylvia Pankhurst, the daughter of Emmeline Pankhurst and was an Independent Democratic Union established on 231 Roman road in East London. It was an organisation that supported and tried to involve working women in the suffrage movement and to link the cause with larger labour struggles.
The organisation led suffrage demonstrations it also carried out acts of militancy, particularly calling for rent strikes. Sylvia Pankhurst also edited a newspaper as part of the Federation called the women's Dreadnought vocalising their beliefs to London's community and beyond, and upon the breakout of World War One, the Federation was vital in creating aid networks, the people of East London who were hit hard by unemployment and increases in food prices, and they also led anti war activities opposing conscription. Now even just with this brief overview, we see that these London Federation of suffragettes focused on more than just the women's suffrage movement. Its socialist motivations established a keen focus on working class people forcing it separation from the WSPU and the organisation was centred on the lives of East London Community and rooted in the fight for enfranchisement across class in social life. It supported labour challenges of the working classes in trade union struggles and even supported the Dublin lockout of 1913.
From 1916 the Federation changed its name to emphasise its fight for workers hinged upon its participation in local communities from these London Federation as well we get a geographic scale of the suffragette movement and its influence across London, moving away from the central spaces of London where demonstrations typically took place to carve spaces for itself across various communities. We also highlight the longevity of class centred arguments within feminist movements with organisations and individuals of both then and now fighting to ensure equality and representation for all women across class lines and social brackets. Now we recognise that these are really important points to emphasise to truly reflect the influence scope and impact of the suffragette movement within the Women's History of London.
But on the other hand, we also saw the opportunity to expand and consider the various intersections of women's movements, highlighting their diverse histories of individual women within the suffragettes so there are class dimensions to emphasise within the suffragette movement, particularly to the story of Sophia Duleep Singh, the princess in her own right the daughter of the Maharajah Duleep Singh and the goddaughter of Queen Victoria, Sophia was a suffragette known for her participation with the women's social and political union and her role in the Black Friday demonstrations. She campaigned in her local area of Richmond and Surrey, notably selling the suffragette newspaper outside of her home in Hampton Court Palace, given to her by Queen Victoria alongside Emmeline Pankhurst Sophia was also a leader in the Black Friday protests in the 18th of November 1910, which were notorious for police assault upon protesters.
She also supported the patronage of Indian people in Britain, supporting Indian Clubs in east of London. During World War One she became a Red Cross nurse, visiting and aiding Indian soldiers and drawing attention to their contributions to the war effort. But this did not stop her support of women's organisations joining the women's tax resistance league, a women's organisation that refused to pay taxes, when they have no authority of how the taxes are spent. She also joined the suffragette fellowship, for which she supported until she died in 1948. So that was one important dynamic that we were able to highlight through the map. But we were also able to represent women with disabilities as part of the movement, notably Rosa May Billinghurst. So she was a suffragette, who notably took part in the Black Friday demonstration, but also in the window smashing campaign of 1912.
As a child, Rosa May contracted polio which paralysed from the waist down and used a tricycle for her mobility for the rest of her life. She faced many injustices over the course of her life, but it's only came to influence her political beliefs and charity. She worked with workhouse inmates and poor children in Deptford, but she also fought for women's rights by first joining the women's liberal Association before resigning to join the women's social and political union. She helped organise public meetings and campaign events, and she also helped form the Greenwich branch of the WSBU. In newspaper articles, she was known as the cripple suffragette and though this name was used to centralise her disabilities, the disabilities did not limit her involvement. Most famously Rosa May was known for running her tricycle into police cordons during demonstrations, but her disabilities were weaponized against her.
During the Black Friday protests, Rosa May was assaulted by the police, she was pushed down a side road and by twisting her arms behind her back, and they pocketed the wheel vows of her tricycle, leaving her unable to escape the angry crowds. She also endured multiple stints in Holloway prison, where she was violently force fed after going on hunger strike. However, this didn't sully her quest to improve the lives of women. She campaigned against the treatment of women in prison after her release, and she also participated in feminist societies until she died. Now as part of this project, we were able to highlight many more women's lives and stories to for example, Minnie Lansbury, who was also a founding member of the East London Federation of suffragettes, who went on to become elected as a council and popular with the Labour Party, or Florence Feek who was a postal worker in suffragette, whose participation in suffragette actions and subsequent arrest challenged her role at the post office to the point where the Prime Minister was called to consult.
So knowing and highlighting these histories, changed how the suffragette movement was viewed and demonstrated how statues such as Hope, actually symbolised many women's fights for suffrage. Moreover, this intimate and introspective focus on individual biographies meant that we were able to emphasise how movements like the suffragettes, how milestones such as the equal enfranchised acts, which gave men and women equal rights to vote in Britain, and how the histories of London and women overall were made by thinking feeling women, each with their own lives, stories and struggles, who occupied at one point in time, the same place that we pass and live in every day. It forced us to be critical of these histories that are popularised and find the layers of London's history that were forged by women that have been hidden, more so though these incredible women were our focus, we are humbled at the fact that this project is something that can be undertaken by anyone, and that we can all have a part to play in celebrating London as a City of Women. Now I'm going to hand over to Duncan to talk a bit more about the construction of the map.
Duncan Hay 14:55
Thank you that was wonderful. So I'm going to talk a little bit about some of the research background to this project before the City of Women London map came to be. It sort of emerges from a strand of work that's been going on at the centre for advanced spatial analysis for well, it's longer than five years. But this particular bit of the story begins around five years ago. And it's a collaboration between the Centre for Advanced spatial analysis and another Research Unit at the Bartlett School of Architecture, the survey of London. So the survey of London architectural historians, they've existed as a research group since the 1890s.
They've variously been part of the GLC, they've been independent, and latterly, they've become part of the Bartlett School of Architecture. And they publish sort of meticulously researched monographs about individual parishes of London and their architectural history. And around five years ago, I worked with them to develop an interactive map of the history of Whitechapel, Peter Guillory who's the lead on the project, there's talks about bridging the gap between official and unofficial history. So what they wanted to do was to sort of bring their research to a much wider audience using web technologies, but also to start a conversation with the public about the history of place that something that is collectively produced and collectively written. And the result was this interactive map, further survey of London White Chapel, which you can find it survey of london.org. And we map the whole of White Chapel. And every building in it is interactive for many buildings.
So for example, East London Mosque, you will find an academic essay, written by the survey of London that tells you the history of that building, how it came to be, and who was instrumental in its building. But the other thing that the website did is it invited contributions from members of the public. And what we were trying to do with this was to bring different ways of talking about the past into dialogue with one another in using this digital medium. But what we found with the site, and I mean, it has been enormously successful, we have 1000s of visitors every month, and it's a wonderfully rich resource. But it is an encyclopaedia, there's an enormous amount of content. And what we found was the individual's stories, they sort of begin to get lost slightly in the sheer weight of information we have.
So we applied for further funding to make an open source version of the software that I built for the White Chapel project. And that became a memory map or the memory map toolkit. And the first memory map for is a project with the writer and artist, Rachel Lichtenstein, who is a specialist in oral history. And she's worked for many years with the Jewish community in East London, documenting their lives. So the memory map for the Jewish Eastend was almost like a distillation of her work in East London, and was our first memory map. And on it, you can find Rachel's interviews with the Jewish community in White Chapel, and their history. And the idea was to really give a much more focused view on the history of East London, but also to sort of demonstrate that everyplace could be mapped differently by almost anyone.
So the thought was, is that in producing this toolkit, other people could be inspired to make their own maps, and with a bit of technical knowledge, and admittedly probably quite a lot of help from me, get up and running and produce their own subjective maps of place. It's been really, really successful. As Leah mentioned earlier, one of our second projects that we ran using memory mapper was the Newham Youth map, where we worked with young people in Newham to map places which are a value to them, were particularly important during the lockdown, so of the first year of the pandemic, and we've also worked with other academics and other members of the public. So there's a map of modernist Manchester.
And there's also, for example, a Literary Map of the romantic Alps. So the romantic the representation of romantic writing in the Swiss Alps, we have memory maps of indigenous fishing communities in Chennai, we have a map of permaculture gardening in Liverpool. And I think one of the things that we've found really extraordinary about the memory map toolkit is it although we built it with specifically with cultural heritage and cultural history in mind, it actually has many applications across different across different disciplines and different ways of talking about space and talking about culture. The City of Women London map is by far and away the most high profile map we've worked on. It's enormously exciting, and we hope inspirational to people to do what the memory map toolkit is designed to do, and think critically about the spaces in which they live and their histories and how they want to tell those stories.
Leah Lovett 19:41
Thank you, Duncan, I'm going to suggest we open up to questions if anyone has any questions.
Duncan Hay 19:47
I've just spotted a really important question in the chat about accessibility. One of the great things that we discovered working with the Newham Youth map, we were lucky enough to work with two young people who were partially sighted, and we invested time in improving the accessibility of the interactive map. And there's a text only version of the site. So it's fully accessible because unfortunately, digital maps do tend to be a bit of an accessibility nightmare. So that's something we were very careful to address.
Leah Lovett 20:18
There's a question here from Bonnie, thank you for the overview, what do you think is the future for keeping sustainable engagement with these web based resources?
Duncan Hay 20:26
I mean, one thing we found, I think it's the crowdsourcing aspect, which I mentioned with the White Chapel project is enormously labour intensive. It requires people working on the ground with people to do conduct interviews, to encourage people to make submissions and to sustain engagement with the project. And one of the decisions that we made with memory mapper was not to have that crowdsourcing function. It's more of it's a publishing platform, so much more like almost like a spatial blog, rather than a crowdsourcing platform, because it gives, the idea being is that people have authorship and have ownership over their own content that we hope will drive this the impetus to to use it as a publishing platform.
Leah Lovett 21:11
I would just add to that, in terms of engagement over time, with something like City of Women, there are projects that we are going to be running ongoing from this work that we have already done. So as well as the sort of gradual release of historic archival material, we will be running a series of interview training sessions with girls in schools in London, and some of our living women on the map, have very generously offered their time, so that the girls will be interviewing the living women featured on the map. And then those audio interviews will be able to be added to the map as fresh content. So I think is also that question of, yeah, someone has to hold the map and produce more content for it for it to continue being a kind of usable living resource. But something like this project or city of women project, it's really usable as an engagement tool. So we found that schools have been very receptive to using it as a kind of learning resource as well. There's a question about how to add women to the map. For example, the first black head teacher London resident died and could easily be commemorated through the map. And I would say, so this this map, the names have been selected for this map. It's an incredibly kind of diverse intersectional map of names that have been chosen, but it is a partial representation. And the names have been selected by Emma and Reni and Rebecca. But with the toolkit, the idea is that anyone can create a map which represents their own imagining their own representation of London, and its significant figures. So this map is fixed. But there can be more maps. There's a question here that I would like to ask Montaz, who's your favourite person on the map?
Montaz Marche 22:50
So obviously worked on so many different women's histories. And this has been such an eye opening experience. And I don't know if I can really pin down one favourite, because there's been so many inspirational stories. But I mean, definitely, we've kind of focused on trying to get women from loads of different industries, for example, particularly STEM industries, there were some women who like created women only organisations that then ended up becoming massive industry leaders and kind of heading the way in office relations and using women who, particularly in like the 60s and 70s, who were kind of at home because they can't work anymore because of marriage or children. And showing that women though they kind of have this life at home, they are so capable of contributing to the working world. Yeah, I don't know if anyone else has any kind of favourites, they can broadly outline.
Leah Lovett 23:47
Well, there are so many incredible people represented on the map. And we were reading them and learning about many of them, for me, many of them for the first time in lockdown. And I did find something intensely hopeful. I mean, the impressive stories were wonderful. But sometimes for me that the stories that landed or that I connected with, I'm going to say one name, who is maybe didn't have as many accolades as some of the people on the map. But I really liked her story. And it's the story of Mary Grierson who discovered her passion for for illustration in I think in her 60s, having kind of worked in other jobs through her adult life. And she realised she loved illustration so much she she ended up becoming the botanical illustrator at Kew Gardens, and there's something I just found those stories where it's lives that you can connect with and very hopeful that combat narratives about success having to be something that happens very, very early or in a very defined linear way. I think there's something about the story as a set that give a very varied view of what success can look like and what a contribution to society can look like. And I think that's something that I've really loved about the project, and that I'm really excited to share.
Duncan Hay 25:05
Yeah, I mean, I would, I don't really know very much about sport. And there's been some really inspirational sports women. I think my favourite has been Lottie Dodd, who seemed to be like the best at everything she was she played tennis, she played golf, she was just so extraordinary.
Leah Lovett 25:21
There's a question about credible information about the diverse range of women. Montaz? Would you like to address that because I think I suspect that something that you have to contend with in your kind of day to day research as well.
Montaz Marche 25:33
So particularly working within the lockdown, it was kind of hard to access a lot of the usual resources that we would call upon to kind of begin research such as this. So particularly like libraries, archives, things that will all kind of shut down. So we will kind of from the get go, almost limited in our research, and how we can kind of extract a lot of the kind of biographies of these women for this project. And so we were kind of limited in the beginning to a lot of internet searches within itself is problematic, sort of, right, because there's so much kind of false information. And so we began a research, I suppose, a methodology. But we began anyway to kind of search as many sources as possible using things like the ultra dictionary of National Biography, JSTOR, kind of major sources that give us information about but kind of tiny pieces of information and using newspapers and resources such as that, to gain a semblance of a lot of these women's histories. But naturally, there is a lot of false information out there so we had to look kind of expansively and we had to ensure that the information which we found was supported by other sources. We were lucky enough for some of the women to have experts, family members, historians to kind of call upon to speak about the respective women and so we were able to collaborate in that sense. We had a collaborative process to support our research, and nautrally with the biographies themselves can't cover everything in each woman's life but we tried to highlight the main points and celebrate them as an individual rather than just bullet point their accolades. And celebrate their tenacity and everything they achieved and their personality as well. So it's trying to see as much as possible and gather as much research as we can. The limits of the biography helped us make sure that we put the most accurate information as possible.
Leah Lovett 27:40
Yeah, just to add, obviously, that with the range of dates that we're dealing with, and just the sheer kind of scale of the project, we're a small team, we have had to be kind of realistic about our resources as well, there's 280-odd stops on the on the tube. So if everyone gets 500 words, you're talking about two to three monographs worth of writing, I suppose the hope in terms of framing this as a living resource is that it can continue to grow from the space that we're beginning. And the space that we're beginning is, is around that mark 500-odd words per person, images, where we've been able to source them, where people are living much of the time, they've been really helpful and actively sort of supporting the project by sharing information and images with us, which is really exciting. So it's a kind of growing archive, in a sense. And yeah, we've had the benefit of input from historians, such as Steven Bourne, who shared knowledge and resources with us as well, but it's a growing resource. It will it will continue to grow, it will continue to change.
Yeah. So the question is, has there been inclusion of complex histories thinking about Mary Stokes, for instance, interesting and impactful, hard and sad truths, which deserve to be openly acknowledged? Okay. Yes, it's something we spent quite a long time speaking about, I suppose partly, and that's sort of picking up on something I was saying earlier, which is around challenging stereotypical representations of success, especially for women or the idea that to be deemed successful, women are held to a kind of impossibly high bar of conduct. We have tried to convey a picture of relatable people who have faced challenges, who are imperfect, I would say in terms of choosing the names for the final map, you know, though there's a great deal of care and attention in terms of selecting people who are representative of the concerns of the of the three leads, who, who chose the names. It goes back to this idea that every map is a proposition, every map is partial. And this map is no different in terms of our role, acknowledging where there are complex narratives to be drawn out, is very much something that we have tried to do, where we were writing about people who are living, it also matters to us that those people feel well represented on the map. So there has sometimes been conversation around how those stories are presented. There's a question about whether we can have a follow up webinar once we once once the maps launched. And I'm very happy to continue speaking about this project personally. Anything that surprised you through the research process?
Montaz Marche 30:49
What surprised me the most, I think, kind of follow up. What Duncan said earlier is that there are some women who have such extraordinary biographies, and so a wealth of information out there. And there are some women that was just so underrepresented by the conversation or by kind of the living conversation. And so we kind of very much in some places had to start from scratch. And there are some women on here who's kind of, they have kind of flitters of information around on the internet or in books, and that we had to then use to kind of compile into an actual biography. And that in a lot of ways, was quite honoured to be able to kind of contribute a biography at the kind of full biography in that sense. But in other ways, it kind of is reflective of the histories that we are trying to, or the challenges of history that we are trying to rectify, in that there are so many women in this map, there's no in no way representative, or the women's histories that need to be we should know about who made London the way we know it now. But there's so much that kind of needs to be drawn out. And I think that was most surprising that kind of how much of a role that we will play in working towards that. I think I already had that kind of idea in my head when we kind of begun the project. But over the course of time, it's still kind of came as a shock that these women who I think are absolutely incredible, and have lived such raw and impactful lives, who have just even from just kind of local councillors who have, you know, just loved their community enough to dedicate their life to it, who just kind of still went under the radar, who have like a brief mention here and there to be able to bring that history to the light was really important.
Leah Lovett 32:22
Thank you. I've just seen a question around geographical limits, and it's something that I mentioned earlier. Um, so the question is, are there any geographical limits, something I meant to say earlier, when, when I was introducing the New York map, and we looked at the Great Bear is that we have endeavoured or I say, We, the leadership team has endeavoured with this map to locate everyone as far as as possible in relationship to a place that they have a connection with, often that is a kind of direct connection, or, you know, geographical connection, occasionally, it's a symbolic connection. In rare cases, it hasn't been possible, because, as you might imagine, it quickly became like a massive game of Jenga, you know, trying to find spaces. And something, something sort of fascinating that came out of that process is that there were key stations, which were highly contested, because they were maybe this the focal point for a lot of political activity. There are certain stations in central London, I remember there being a really long list for Brixton, for instance, what kind of came through that process is, of course, there are parts of London that are underserved by the infrastructure that we're dealing with as the scaffolding for this history project. So South London has fewer stations. So there is more competition, if you like for some of those stations. And likewise, as we move further out into zones four, five and six of the tube map, more work had to be done to kind of find the connections that would make a sort of meaningful link. So I think there is a very interesting piece of work to be drawn out of this, which is around spatial representation infrastructure, the distribution of power and narrative through a space along the lines of like network like that, like the London Underground. I don't know if anyone else would like to add to that.
Duncan Hay 34:16
Yeah, just sort of note that yeah, I think it's really interesting, the way that this whole project is really about spatial inequality and representation. And the spatial inequalities built into the tube network, have then gone on to shape the editorial decisions and the representation. So it's, there's, it's just very, very interesting the way those two things are interrelated and sort of play themselves out in the mapmaking process, and I think it's a particular issue with the tube map because that the infrastructure is where it is. But I think there it is that thinking between spatial histories and how those histories are represented. Cartographically is sort of the it's almost like the point of memory map thrown away.
Leah Lovett 35:07
There's a question here about I mean, I would say these questions did we think about, including campaigns and organisations, I would reiterate that these are not our choices. These are the choices of Reni and Emma and Rebecca, but were campaigns and organisations chosen without pinning to individual women. Yes, there are some stops, which are named for campaigns, there is even one stop known for a piece of architecture. And connected to that, does the map include statues of women or works of art by women? And in that case, no, we haven't included statues as station names, but there are many artists included on the map. And through kind of archival research and their consent and participation in the project, there will be artworks that feature on the map,
Duncan Hay 35:53
we've got a follow up on the complex histories question, which is did I interpret correctly, that the approach was not to include those challenging narratives? There was definitely an editorial question about who goes on there. But I think where there's complex pictures, we've tried to paint those complex pictures,
Leah Lovett 36:10
I think the team felt you know that they are creating a map, which is there, the women that they want to celebrate, and the women, the people that they want to celebrate on the map. So they chose people they want to celebrate on the map. It's a partial map, I would keep coming back to that, really, it's it's sort of a wonderful problem that we had, that there were so many names of remarkable people that deserve to be on this map, that there will be people who are not on it, because there are a fixed number of stops. And wonderfully, there are more than 280 people who we would love to have included,
Montaz Marche 36:41
and I think is like just a follow up cluding, a lot of these women were focused on some of the incredible work that they did. But at the same time, we wanted to highlight a history of their life or like their whole life. And there might be elements of which which were challenging elements of which go against some of the ideals that we hold dear now. But as we're trying to tell this history, we couldn't necessarily ignore those facts. And the whole point of this project is the kind of undoing erasures. And so we wanted to ensure that, you know, these women were seen as whole women who had a whole lives who lived in different contexts, as well as particularly for some of the historical examples. They were defined by different standards. And so they experienced things that were incredibly challenging. And so we wanted to reflect those wholeheartedly to kind of demonstrate that history and reflect them as people, not just kind of as these icons, right as symbols of greatness. They were women like everyday people just like we are and they lived full lives that we wanted to reflect.
Leah Lovett 37:41
Thank you, Montaz, we're coming to the end of the time. Thank you so much for all the questions we've had far more than we've been able to answer today. And just reminds me to say thank you very much again to the Grand Challenges team for the opportunity to speak in this context. And thanks to my colleagues as well for your contributions to the talks.