The Face of Suffrage

Today we visited Birmingham to meet up with friends from Wolverhampton. Lots of chat, a pleasant lunch in a very grand pub in an old bank building near the cathedral, a walk round the Christmas Market and a visit to the museum to see the Staffordshire Hoard exhibition.

On the way through the station, we spotted this. 'The Face of Suffrage' at Birmingham New Street, is a 200 square metre floor based artwork by Helen Marshall made up of 3700 photos of women and girls submitted by the public combined with hundreds of historical images from the early 1900's. It forms a portrait of Hilda Burkitt (1876-1955), a suffragette who worked at the Birmingham Women's Social and Political Union and was arrested and incarcerated after throwing a stone at a train carrying Prime Minister Asquith. She was the first suffragette to be forcibly fed a total of 292 times. The artwork will remain in place until December 14th, which is 100 years since the date that women first voted in the UK.