‘This coin honours our parents and their legacy’

By Valda Jackson

I am a multidisciplinary artist and writer; creating complex narratives that reflect and interrogate our past and present.

Both in my visual art and in my writing, my work essentially is about our existence and survival; it’s about individual entitlement, privilege and, above all, dignity.

When my parents set off from Jamaica in the 1960s, my two older sisters and I were left with my grandmother and a young aunt. Three years on, we were sent to join them in England.

I grew up in Birmingham in a strongly religious community of men and women, many of whom also had children who, over time, might be sent-for.

My experience has been one of growing up in a Caribbean/British culture within a wider English/British one, then working and bringing up my own children while making work that explores our cultural and historical truths.

I am deeply sensitive to the many reasons, situations, concerns, the dreams, and the hope that compelled my parents and others to take the decision to leave their homes and travel such distance, to work and create for themselves and their children a future they could barely have visualised.

They lived and worked alongside their counterparts, English, Irish, Scottish, and Welsh, longing, perhaps, to be seen and treated as equal.

I believe in the power of the image, and the written word – what can be called upon through focus on intense small details – in the emotional capacity of marks laboured over, whether drawn, sculpted or inscribed, their intricacies and subtleties, their poetry, a pattern on a blouse, the form and particulars of a face.

We see examples in the magnificent terracotta, ivory or cast metal figures and heads from Benin or Ife.

In them one sees serenity, repose, and dignity, where even on a scale much smaller than life size they are limitless in their reach and meaning.

These works have become some of my greatest influences and it is deeply moving to look upon them and recognise in my own images, heads – drawn, painted, or sculpted – those features, that serenity, the dignity of Obas, Kings and Queens.

It was important, I think, to honour our multiplicity of differences while recognising our similar stories and histories.

The image is one of unity, representing the bond between the UK and Commonwealth citizens who helped rebuild the country in its time of need.

I am very happy to have my design selected for this coin, which honours our parents and their legacy; and which celebrates our presence, achievements, and contributions that continue to enrich our society.