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Heated debate over which statues should remain standing in the UK has sparked new initiatives to diversify the nation’s public art works. Among them we can expect to see religion play a role.

The Mayor of London is putting £1m towards new murals, sculptures and statues in 2022 and has been encouraging faith communities to apply.

For Radio 4’s Sunday Programme, Vishva Samani has been exploring some of the new faith-inspired public art works appearing across the country.

Image: 'Eternal Wall of Answered Prayer' © Snug Architects and Renderloft

“You can see a Muslim woman with a veil on, a young Sikh man, you have a Bangladeshi family, the lotus flower and there are Christian individuals depicted here,” describes Maziar Bahari, founder of public art organisation "Paint the Change" as we stand facing their huge colourful street mural.

It reflects the varied faces of Tower Hamlets in East London. Faces that are inseparable from their faith backgrounds in many cases, as Maziar explains, “This mural painted in late 2020 is really about celebrating individuals who are important to this specific community and each of them has their own faith and religious beliefs.”

Among them is local poet Mr Gee who writes about God in his poem, "The Sound of the African Drum".

Delighted to see his face painted alongside so many others, he feels it mirrors the way faith communities co-exist in his area: “Religion has many faces, ideas and interpretations. We’re in a place that’s had waves of immigrants that have brought with them their own interpretations of fashion, music… and God.”

Passer-by Rufshana Begum also loves the sense of unity in the mural, and specifically relates to the image of a smiling woman in a veil: “I wear a hijab myself. It’s my choice to wear it and I feel as though having that picture in the centre… it does really get to me... in a good way.”

Paint the Change are hoping to work with East London’s faith communities to create their next mural with funding from the Mayor of London's £1m "Untold Stories" grant. Sadiq Khan set it up in 2021 to review London's public statues and landmarks after a year of protest.

National research he partly funded by Art UK reveals a paucity in representation. Among the nearly 1500 monuments in the capital, 4% are dedicated to women and only three sculptures exist honouring women of colour.

Antony Gormley's The Angel of the North. Photo: 漏 Gateshead Council/Sally Ann Norman

Jasvir Singh is on the Mayor’s Commission for Diversity in the Public Realm and has been urging faith groups to apply: “‘Untold Stories’ is trying to change things for the better. Not by removing what's already there but by focussing on what isn't there and adding to it.”

But what role is there for religion in publicly funded art on our streets?

Interestingly, much of Britain’s civic art has religious resonance, as Andrew Davies, Professor of Public Religion at Birmingham University explains: “Memorials that are in the heart of most communities carry religious themes and there is the ‘Angel of the North’, completed in 1998, that reflects the dignity of the northeast of England but has clear religious resonances and themes.”

Yet he is clear that it is not the role of the state to promote religion, rather to promote opportunity and equality: “If it's making a contribution to civic good or to public benefit, celebrating values such as cohesion and togetherness that we want to share as a community then yes obviously religion is key and a really important element within that.”

Professor Davies points out new and upcoming public art works that reflect religious themes in the West Midlands, such as the Birmingham city centre 2021 sculpture 'Forward Together' which celebrates how its multi-faith community can collaborate for the good of the city.

Work is also underway in Coleshill to build a crowdfunded explicitly Christian ‘Eternal Wall of Answered Prayer’ in 2023 that will be made up of bricks that represent a story of Jesus answering people’s prayers from around the world.

But should public money be spent on art that represents our collective identity as we emerge from a period of difficulty and instability?

As one of the London Mayor’s diversity commissioners, Jasvir Singh believes it should: “It’s more important than ever for us to be able to reflect on who we are as individuals right now, who we are as Brits, and create something which people can look at in centuries to come and say…so this is what emerged from that dark period of history.”