The Lion and The Unicorn

I've passed this work on Southbank a few times and, walking home from walk, today though it would make a good blip. I understand that this work, by Gitta Cschwendtner, is here as part of the Festival of Britain.

The following is copied from the sign by the work: The original 1951 Lion and Unicorn Pavilion housed and flight of ceramic birds symbolising migration and freedom of speech. In homage to this piece, artist Gitta Gschwendtner has created a new installation in collaboration with young people from refugee groups across London. Their poems, printed and spoken here, reinterpret original themes of strength and imagination. Many of the artists involved in the Festival of Britain were from refugee backgrounds and the Lion and the Unicorn sculpture celebrates and lays stark the stories of young people new to Britain, releasing their words into the world.

The work consists of printed pages, as seen here, hung on fine vertical wires, and an elegant flight of paper planes sweeping into the sky from one end (I wasn't happy with the images I got showing the paper planes, but they are beautiful).

Gitta Gschwendtner collaborated with young poets and youth leaders from: The Refugee Council, Refugee Youth, The Refugee Home School Support Project, The Klevis Kola Foundation, and poets Joelle Taylor, Karen McCarthy Woolf, Philip Wells, and Yemisi Blake. Construction of the sculpture was by Mark Wilding.