Welcome to Hope: The Lego Suffragette Exhibition 10th-28th February 2025
Hope, the life-sized Lego Suffragette Statue
A life-sized Lego Suffragette statue named ‘Hope’ will be on display in the Agora, Faculty of Arts Building between the 10th and 28th of February 2025. Originally exhibited in the UK Parliament House of Commons, Hope’s visit coincides with the University of Warwick’s 60th birthday and commemorates 75 years since the election of the first female MP for Coventry, Elaine Burton, in 1950.
The History Department is hosting a series of activities during Hope’s stay, raising awareness of local Votes for Women campaign stories and sparking diverse conversations about women’s voting and equal rights in Britain and across the globe today.
Information on events, news, research and collaborative work related to Hope’s visit will be available here during the exhibition and beyond as we look toward 2028 and the commemoration of 100 years since the 1928 Equal Franchise Act when all women in Britain finally gained equal voting rights to men.
About Hope
In 2018, UK Parliament commemorated 100 years since some women over 30 in Britain first won the right to vote in parliamentary elections in 1918. It held a range of public exhibitions, events and activities to encourage debates about women’s political and other forms of equality. The legacy of these celebrations included the construction of ‘Hope’ the Lego Suffragette who is now travelling the country on the road to 2028 and the equal suffrage centenary celebrations.
‘Hope’ was named in a public poll and stands 5 ft 6 in (1.7m) in height. She was built by The Lego Group using 32, 327 Lego bricks, taking a team of three 171 hours to create.
As a suffragette, Hope symbolizes the histories of women’s fight for the right to vote in Britain which involved ‘ordinary’ women and men in villages, towns and cities right across the country and drew campaigners from around the globe. For a potted history of the Votes for Women movement, including in Coventry and Warwickshire, and its diversities, see below.
Warwick History Department: Celebrating Women
Since the University of Warwick’s inception in 1965 the History Department was shaped by progressive ideas focusing on the study of social and cultural history. Some staff and many students in the department were involved in social movements and demonstrations and actively promoted feminist ideas. A former BA history student in its early days, Jan Pollock, recalled ‘the strong atmosphere of student politics encouraged women to speak up for themselves’. Another, Richard Cervantes, a History and Sociology student in the 1970s, was ‘shocked by the new wave of feminist ideas which were taught by tutors.’
Nonetheless, the department’s first female lecturer, Sarah Richardson, was not appointed until 1988 to a part-time post alongside 26 male colleagues. Sarah originally scheduled Hope’s visit to the FAB Agora before her departure from Warwick History after 35 years of teaching. Penny Roberts followed as the second female academic in the department in 1992 and is currently professor of Early Modern European History.
In the years since, the gender balance in the department has gradually moved to near parity with a vibrant community of women academics and support staff from diverse backgrounds bringing skills and advancing knowledge across a broad range of topics around the globe. This is matched by a diverse female student community working across four departmental research centres and a cluster of interdisciplinary groups, reflecting research interests in global history, material culture, gender and sexuality and race.
The History Department’s sponsoring of the Hope: Lego Suffragette Exhibition builds on these traditions, opening fresh opportunities to share, celebrate, discuss and support women’s past, present and future global struggles for voting and other equality rights either yet to be attained, or currently under threat.
More news, events, and links to departmental work on women’s suffrage, gender and feminist equalities can be found below. For a Warwick History project you can get involved in see www.mappingwomenssuffrage.org.uk
Did you know?
Warwick History has uncovered a direct family connection between the founding of Warwick University and the Votes for Women campaign! When a board was formed in the late 1950s to push for a university in Coventry, one member, Lord Edward Langton Iliffe was at its centre. Lord Iliffe was the son of Charlotte Iliffe and E. Mauger Iliffe a newspaper publisher and later Conservative MP for Tamworth and Warwickshire. Charlotte, Lord Iliffe’s mother, had been a founding member of the local Coventry branch of the National Union of Women’s Suffrage Societies, the largest and law-abiding society campaigning for Votes for Women led by Mrs Milicent Fawcett. The Coventry branch formed circa 1910 was an Iliffe family affair. Charlotte’s mother-in-law Annette was also a member and later it’s president. Meanwhile, Lord Iliffe’s father E. Mauger Iliffe was also supportive and in his role as MP was explicit in his support in the 1920s, for extending votes for women to the same terms as men, finally achieved in 1928.
Their son Lord Iliffe, instrumental in Warwick University’s founding, later sat on the university council and was recognised for this work and his many charitable endeavours, in 1969 being awarded the Honorary Freedom of the city of Coventry.
Image courtesy of The Women's Library, LSE
Suffragette: A potted history of the Votes for Women Campaign
‘Hope’ as a suffragette symbolises women’s historical campaign for political equality in Britain: a difficult struggle that spanned over 60 years.
Women had a long history of political activism but their fight for the right to vote in parliamentary elections – to have a say in who governed the land - became a truly, nationally organised movement in 1866. Signatures were gathered from women across the country for a petition to parliament demanding a woman’s suffrage amendment to the forthcoming 1867 Second Reform Act which was set to extend existing voting rights for men.
The petition failed but spawned a host of societies dedicated to winning Votes for Women. By the early twentieth century the two largest societies Mrs Milicent Fawcett’s National Union of Women’s Suffrage Societies (NUWSS) and Mrs Emmeline Pankhurst’s Women’s Social and Political Union (WSPU) defined the campaign. NUWSS members known as ‘suffragists’ campaigned peacefully while WSPU ‘suffragettes’ engaged in acts of civil disobedience, vandalism, arson and bombings.
Women and men in Coventry and across Warwickshire were active in the women’s suffrage movement as ‘suffragists’ and ‘suffragettes’ and so too were campaigners with diverse class, sexualities, religions, disabilities and ethnicities.
To read more about the campaign and discover some suffrage stories of diversity download the Hope: Lego Suffragette Exhibition Brochure (PDF)Link opens in a new window
If you have visited the Hope: Lego Suffragette Exhibition we would value your feedback: Online Survey.
News, Events & Links
Upcoming
- 12th of February 2025: Warwick History in collaboration with the Centre for Teaching and Learning will be welcoming local primary school children to Warwick to experience a range of fun activities and learn about local suffrage campaigners. Activities include suffrage card games, a VR Suffragette Museum, bag and banner printing sessions, taking place across the FAB and Mead Gallery.
- 13th of February 2025: Warwick History in collaboration with the Centre for Teaching and Learning, the Modern Records Centre, and Warwick Business School & UN Delegate on women and girl’s education, Dr Shweta Singh, will be welcoming local GCSE & A Level students to learn about the women’s suffrage campaign, Coventry’s first female MP Elaine Burton, and the importance of girls’ global education.
- 19th of February 2025: Dr Tara Morton from the History Department will be speaking for the History on Film series about the film Suffragette (2015) followed by a screening of the film at Warwick Arts Centre - talk with Dr Tara Morton at 17.30 in FAB 6.02 and screening at 18.30 in FAB Cinema. Full details hereLink opens in a new window.
- 22nd of February 2025: Warwick History are hosting a ‘Speakers Saturday’ in the FAB on the theme Hope: Celebrating Political Women in Coventry & Warwickshire Past, Present, Future. The event will welcome back Prof. Sarah Richardson and features Coventry South MP Zarah Sultana; Senior UK Parliamentary Archivist Mari Takayanagi, and Warwick’s own global gender equality advocate and AI specialist, Dr Shweta Singh from Warwick Business School. This event also includes a book signing. For more details and tickets see Eventbrite.
‘Hope’ collaboration inspires students from local schools
On 12 February pupils from Southfields Primary School and Earlsdon Primary School in Coventry spent the day with us at Warwick campus in the FAB building enjoying a range of fun Suffragette themed activities. The pupils got to see, and be inspired by, Hope: the Lego Suffragette, as well as having the opportunity to get involved with banner making, suffrage canvas bag printing, a VR suffrage museum experience and drama workshops re-enacting suffrage scenes from Votes for Women campaigners’ real-life stories and experiences.
The stories and histories of the campaign, materials and visuals, were provided by Lego Suffragette project manager Dr Tara Morton (History dept.) and woven into exciting experiences and fun activities with Assistant prof. Anna Donnelly (Centre for Teaching & Learning, CTL) Dr. Robert O’Toole (Digital Arts & Humanities Lab) Teaching Fellow Louisa Brown (CTL) Gemma Wright (Head of Creative Arts) and Dr Ed Loveman (Design Studies). We had a fantastic time and were also joined by BBC CWR who interviewed staff and some of the children. You can hear more here: Lego suffragette marks anniversary of Coventry's first female MP - BBC News
On the following day, Tara Morton and Anna Donnelly spent the morning with GCSE and A Level students from West Coventry Academy in the Modern Records Centre thanks to Head of Archives, Helen Hopper, and Outreach Officer Lizzy Goodger-Allin. The students learned about archives and examined documents including on the Votes for Women campaign; Elaine Burton Coventry’s first female MP elected 75 years ago; and materials written by teenage girls in the 1980s. In a roundtable talk that followed, we were joined by Dr Shweta Singh (WBS) UK UN Delegate for Women and Girls equalities who stimulated debate about broader issues of women’s global voting rights and education by on drawing on her personal and professional experiences of living and working around the world.
Thanks to all school and Warwick cross faculty staff for their amazing work!
Speakers Saturday with ‘Hope’ attracts local community to Warwick
There was a real buzz in the FAB Agora on Saturday 22nd of February as local visitors gathered with students for a Warwick History event organised by Dr Tara Morton: ‘Hope: Celebrating Political Women in Coventry & Warwickshire, Past, Present, Future’. The event featured guest speakers Prof. Sarah Richardson (University of Glasgow); Dr Mari Takayanagi (Senior UK Parliamentary Archivist); Dr Shweta Singh (Warwick Business School) and Keynote Zarah Sultana, MP for Coventry South.
Hope’s visit to Warwick helped raise awareness of local Votes for Women campaigning and sparked conversations about voting rights and other equality issues facing women and girls in Britain and across the globe today. Speaker’s talks in the morning moved from the Votes for Women campaign in nineteenth and early twentieth century Warwickshire, through to Elaine Burton, Coventry’s first female MP, and her Cold War adventures in the USSR in the 1950s. After lunch, attendees glimpsed into the future with a talk on the potential power and pitfalls of Artificial Intelligence in challenging harmful gender stereotypes and were both inspired and moved by keynote Zarah Sultana’s experiences as a Coventry minority woman MP in the challenging climate of parliamentary politics.
A relaxed networking session over drinks brought the day to a close with thoughts and feelings captured and recorded by brilliant Warwick History students - Amira Neminathan and Ash Fowkes-Gajan – and the day ran smoothly thanks to History’s own fabulous Emma Russell and Claire Woodrow.
