What new artwork next to Colston window will look like
BBCA design has been chosen for a stained-glass window which will be installed next to an existing one commemorating a slave trader.
Bristol Cathedral asked people what they would like to see happen with an 1880s window dedicated to slave trader Edward Colston, whose statue was toppled and thrown into the city's harbour during protests in 2020.
It said the majority of those who responded favoured acknowledging this part of the city's history instead of removing it.
London-based artist Joseph Ijoyemi's Let There Be Light design will work "in dialogue" with the current artwork, the cathedral said, and includes images of shipping, the Caribbean and Bristol.
"[There is also] a very powerful symbol of liberation in a sequence of black figures rising to the heavens," Dean of Bristol Mandy Ford said.
She added the commissioning group "really loved that sense of life and colour and excitement and hope" in Ijoyemi's design.
Colston was a senior member of the Royal African Company, which was responsible for trafficking about 80,000 men, women and children from Africa to the Americas between 1672 and 1689.
He donated much of the money he earned through the slave trade to the city of Bristol and several schools, streets and institutions were named after him, many of which have since been renamed.
Speaking about the consultation, Ford said most people said removing the cathedral window would be "denying the truth of how things were in the past" and instead called for the cathedral to "tell the truth about who Colston was but not pretend he didn't exist".
"The outcome was the proposal to commission a new artwork to be in dialogue with Colston and with the Colston Window, an artwork that would speak about repentance, but would also speak about reconciliation and liberation and hope," she added.
The cathedral said it would take between two and three years for the Ijoyemi's design to be brought to reality and installed.
When completed, it will be the first new artwork in the church for about 60 years.
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