The project aims to identify remarkable female or non-binary Londoners who have had an impact on the city’s history in some way. (Photo: Emma Watson/ Instagram)
Author Reni Eddo-Lodge and actor Emma Watson are helming a project which aims to re-imagine London’s iconic tube map, a report in The Guardian says, adding that they are starting with renaming the stations. The duo is believed to rename 270 stops after women, non-binary people or groups who contributed in shaping the city.
It is believed that a project in the book Nonstop Metropolis by Rebecca Solnit and Joshua Jelly-Schapiro inspired them to do something similar. Some names that are being considered are Mary Wollstonecraft, Virginia Woolf, Zadie Smith, and Amy Winehouse among others.
“The project aims to identify remarkable female or non-binary Londoners who have had an impact on the city’s history in some way. It will allocate them to each of the stations depicted on the London tube map according to their connections to a local area. Some of these people might be household names, others might be unsung heroes or figures from London’s hidden histories. The names might be drawn from arts, civil society, business, politics, sport and so on,” the organisers were quoted as saying, adding, “further contribute to the way London is imagined, navigated, and lived”, and say that “we will never think of the tube – or public space – the same way again”.
In an Instagram post, the author wrote: “If your local London Underground station was named after a woman, who would it be? I’ve teamed up with @emmawatson, writer Rebecca Solnit and @wowisglobal to work on a public history project that uses @transportforlondon’s classic tube map to recognise notable women with strong links to London through the ages. City of Women London will redraw the classic London Underground map by naming each stop after a woman, non-binary person or group. This work builds on the incredible City of Women New York subway map that Rebecca and geographer Joshua Jelly-Shapiro published with @haymarketbooks in 2019, celebrating notable New Yorkers (pictured).”
The project will be unfold in collaboration with curators, historians, writers. The general public too will be asked to weigh in and submit their ideas. It will be published on International Women’s Day (March 8) next year by Haymarket Books.
They will be working in collaboration with WOW Foundation.