Digging deeper

The High Street facade of Oriel College, Oxford, UK, with the Cecil Rhodes Statue magnified. This statue has been the focus of the Rhodes Must Fall movement in Oxford to date.

Proposal for the statue of Cecil Rhodes on the Oxford council building

A proposal from Louisa, Jacopo and Floor

Information

Trespassers can dig into the history of Cecil Rhodes at Digging Deeper

Discussion

Trespasser can discuss on the forum at Digging Deeper

Our proposal

The statue should be rather altered than removed or stayed as it is. We would like to alter the statue to get the attention of people and provide info on his history to inform people. We would like to link to a platform where there is the information, because it's too big to inform people on the spot itself. A link, qr code or whatsoever brings you to a page (wikipedia like) and has a forum/discussion page where everyone can contribute to this topic.

Our working process

We agreed really quickly that the statue shouldn't be removed or stayed as it is. We preferred altering it because it would be better to start a discussion about it and give the space more meaning by providing information than removing it which would end the history.

We looked into the history of Cecil Rhodes on [wikipedia] and quickly found out that this page was tldr. We got attracted by the business he had in diamonds 'cause it gave us visual ideas. The mining industry, shiny objects 'not everything that glitters is gold' came in mind. A digged hole as a metaphor for what he did. He made things worse so he should fall into his own grave. Then we went on by thinking about the diamonds. Maybe some diamonds in the hole? But it would focus way too much about on aspect of his history. We decided that trespasser of the site should make their own opinion about him but we would like to provide information so they can form one. We also would really like to have people get into discussion with each other so a platform where that's possible is our other focus.