Silent protest at Brian Clough statue over lack of female sculptures

Artist Rachel Carter was joined by the National Justice Museum and the older women's group, Wondrous

A group of campaigners have held a silent protest calling on more women to be depicted in statue form.

Artist and sculptor Rachel Carter took part in the demonstration under the statue of Brian Clough at Nottingham's speakers' corner on Tuesday.

She said excluding sculptures of female royals, statues of women currently only make up 5% of monuments across the country.

Money is being raised for a new sculpture of two women in Nottingham.

Ms Carter said the new statue would represent a woman who worked in the textile mills in the East Midlands and another woman who was enslaved and working in the cotton fields of the US and the Caribbean.

It would sit in the city's Broad Marsh area under the new "Green Heart" development.

The new statue is earmarked for the Broad Marsh area of Nottingham

The new artwork follows a similar theme to one in Sheffield where a statue dubbed "Women of Steel" depicts two women dressed in boiler suits, celebrating the work of women in steel works throughout both world wars.

Ms Carter said: "We've been working on a new sculpture and we're trying to highlight the disparity that less than 5% of our statues - like the Cloughie one - are women.

"There are few depicting working class women and even less represent women of colour so we're not well represented in our cities and we'd like to change that.

"We're just raising awareness that we'd like some women represented too."

Ms Carter was joined by the National Justice Museum and the older women's group, Wondrous.