Alternative London tube map to rename stations for ‘women heroes’
An alternative London Underground is to be created with the help of Emma Watson and Reni Eddo-Lodge to pay homage to “women heroes”.
In the 2016 book Nonstop Metropolis: A New York City Atlas, written by Rebecca Solnit and Joshua Jelly-Schapiro, an alternative map of the New York subway system is featured.
The alternative public transport map reimagined the subway in the Big Apple by renaming stations after women, non-binary people and female groups, and was later made into an “iconic” poster.
Four years on, a collaboration of people are hoping to do the same for the London Underground by creating an alternative tube map with stops named after remarkable women and non-binary people.
Solnit and Jelly-Schapiro are to work alongside actor and activist Watson, Why I’m No Longer Talking to White People About Race author Eddo-Lodge and a group including historians, librarians and writers “to produce a map that changes our understanding of public history”.
The initiative was announced by the Women of the World movement on Twitter, who shared a photograph of Watson taken at a London Underground station.
The organisation shared a link to a Google Doc, where the campaign to create a reimagined London Underground map was explained in greater detail.
“In their acclaimed book Nonstop Metropolis, Rebecca Solnit and Joshua Jelly-Schapiro created an alternative map of the New York subway system, renaming stops after women, non-binary people, and female groups,” the document states.
“The map then became an iconic poster and sparked numerous conversations about public space, history, gender, feminism, and memory.”
The document outlined that the group behind the initiative “want to do the same for London, claiming the iconic Underground map for the women who have made and continue to make the city”.
It added that the conception of the map was “inspired by all the women and non-binary people who have shaped London’s history”.
The document also paid homage to “previous reworkings of the London Underground map”, including the “We Apologise for the Delay to your Journey” map, which features black British women, femme artists and cultural workers and can be seen on the website for the Tate Modern.
The group are asking for members of the public to put forward the names of prominent women and non-binary individuals who they would like to see included on the reimagined map.
“The City of Women map hopes to further contribute to the way London is imagined, navigated, and lived,” it said, asking that people leave suggestions to help “produce a map worthy of the city’s countless women heroes”.
You can leave a suggestion for the map by clicking this link.
