Women in Power: a Work in Progress – Lego Suffragette Exhibition

From 20 November to 10 December 2023, we will be hosting ‘Hope’ – a life-sized Lego Suffragette statue on loan from the UK Government – in Muirhead Tower Atrium.

Hope is a representation of real women who took part in the suffrage movement for the voting rights of women in the 19th and 20th centuries.

Hope took three people 171 hours to build, using 32,327 Lego bricks.

She was built by The Lego Group in 2018 to commemorate 100 years since the first women in Britain won the right to vote. However, this only applied to women over 30 who met minimum property qualifications - it would be another 10 years before all women achieved equal voting rights to men.

Hope was chosen as her name following a public poll. She was created for the UK Parliament’s Education and Engagement team and was originally displayed in the House of Commons.

She is currently touring the UK until 2028’s celebration of the 100th anniversary of the 1928 Representation of People (Equal Franchise) Act that gave equal voting rights to all women and men.

Over the next five years, Hope will visit every region and nation of the UK to encourage conversations about women’s suffrage and democratic voting rights. At UoB, we are particularly interested in taking a critical view and exploring perspectives on intersectionality within gender and other equalities to ensure that all experiences are represented.

This Exhibition has been organised by the College of Social Sciences Student Experience team.