In a city, you never have to look too far to see the commemorations of men. Statues, monuments, and buildings stand tall and grand, with given names of (supposedly) great historical figures.

It’s not so common to see the same for women. Despite women’s integral roles in, well, every industry you can think of, society’s structure has meant that all too often those leading figures get overlooked – or worse, written out of history altogether.

In 2018, City Hall began a joint-venture project with Tate Collective called LDN WMN. Kicking off 100 years after women won the right to vote, the collaboration looked to pay tribute to some of the capital’s most influential figures via a series of free artworks and installations, all created by women or non-binary artists. It came as part of the Mayor’s #BehindEveryGreatCity campaign, and included pieces paying tribute to Mary Seacole, Noor Inayat Khan, and Olive Morris, by Heather Agyepong, Manjit Thapp, and Rene Matic respectively. Somewhat delayed by the COVID pandemic, now, the project’s final commission has been unveiled – paying tribute to Dr Beryl Gilroy.

Dr Beryl Gilroy moved to England from what was then British Guiana in 1952, and as part of the Windrush generation, battled through the overt discrimination of her time to “study Child Development, become an acclaimed author, respected broadcaster, and Camden’s first Black headteacher”. As a pioneering writer and ethno-psychotherapist, her achievements and contributions to education and development cannot be understated. Her career is often, and fairly, considered revolutionary. Dr Gilroy remains an inspiration today, while her memoir Black Teacher is somewhat of a rediscovered classic – re-released in 2021 with an introduction by Bernadine Evaristo, the book is “testament to how one woman’s dignity, ambition and spirit transcended her era.”