20,000 political books to be donated via horizontal Big Ben model
Howard Lake | 2 July 2021 | News
A collection of 20,000 donated books about British politics will themselves be donated to members of the public and community groups as part of a giant model of a toppled Big Ben in central Manchester.
Big Ben Lying Down with Political Books is a 42 metre replica of Big Ben that is the work of Argentinian artist Marta Minujín. It goes on display, lying horizontally and covered in the books, in Piccadilly Gardens in Manchester, from 2 to 18 July as part of the Manchester International Festival.
Festival
The books are copies of 150 titles that have been chosen by Manchester organisations such as the People’s History Museum and Working Class Movement Library. They include:
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- Oliver Twist, by Charles Dickens
- The Road to Somewhere: The Populist Revolt and the Future of Politics, by David Goodhart
- The Suffragette Movement, by Sylvia Pankhurst
- You Are A Champion, by Marcus Rashford
The books will be available for ‘redistribution’ on 17 and 18 July. “Everyone is invited to come to the site and take away a book for free”. Remaining books will be distributed amongst schools, community organisations and prisons.
Minujin’s previous large-scale works include The Parthenon of (once banned) Books in Argentina, featuring 30,000 books banned by the junta. The work was reimagined in 2017 in Documenta 14, Kassel, Germany, but this time featuring books banned by the Nazis.
About Howard Lake
Howard Lake is consultant editor of UK Fundraising. He founded the site in 1994 and successfully sold it in 2022. As director of Giving X Ltd he is exploring growing giving on a massive scale.
He is the founder of Fundraising Camp and co-founder of GoodJobs.