The new 'Redemption Song' statue, which was unveiled by Prime Minister PJ Patterson at Emancipation Park yesterday, as the park's first anniversary was marked. The male and female bronzed figures rest on a concrete base filled with water. The statue was created by artist Laura Facey Cooper, who said she was inspired by the words used first by national hero Marcus Garvey and later by reggae icon, Bob Marley. It took her a total of six months to conceptualise and carve the piece. 'Redemption Song' replaces the previous piece, conceptualised by AD Scott, which now rests at the Harbour View round-a-bout. (Photo: Garfield Robinson)

THE Tourism Product Development Company (TPDCo) is now trying to raise $30 million to cast the national monument in a more durable medium in preparation for its final mounting at the Harbour View round-a-bout.

The piece, which was recently removed from its temporary location at the entrance of Emancipation Park in Kingston, is now in plaster. Several mediums, including bronze and aluminum, are now being considered for use in its remolding as TPDCo officials try to find a medium that is both affordable and durable.

Yesterday, workmen were busy making preparations to install the new sculpture at Emancipation Park.

TPDCo is now trying to raise $30 million to cast this national monument in a more durable medium.

Meanwhile, a steering committee spearheaded by TPDCo has been set up to raise money for the project. Committee members include the family of A D Scott, the man who conceptualised the monument; Lois Lake-Sherwood, artist and businesswoman; and Gloria Palomino, chairman of the Kingston Metropolitan Resort Board (KMRB). According to Sandy Chung, TPDCo's director of special projects, the steering committee has already begun efforts to raise funds for the casting of the sculpture, which was completed eight years after independence.

The monument portrays national unity and the rising of a great nation. It will stand on a 10-foot base and carry the crest and motto "Out of Many One People" as well as the country's national heroes and heroine. The bust of the national heroes will surround an immense section carrying some 300 typical Jamaican figures with the faces of popular Jamaicans. It will represent all the racial groups which make up the island's population.

Fitz Harrack, one of Scott's associates who was commissioned by TPDCo to restore some of the pieces of the monument, said that Scott was keen on having the monument cast in aluminum, because aluminum is indigenous to Jamaica.

"He had always wanted to cast the monument in aluminum, because he felt that the earth is alive with its people," his daughter Dr Kerida Scott-McDonald agreed.

Scott is a renowned civil engineer who designed the national stadium, the Olympia Crown Hotel in Papine and many other important structures throughout the island. In 1962, Scott-McDonald said, her father felt that the country lacked "something visual and tangible that would be a symbol of the independence for the island and its people," and that was his inspiration for the piece. He thought, she said, that a national monument would embody the spirit of Jamaica's independence, and would inspire the pride of the people in the birth of their nationhood.

"If you know daddy you know that he does not think in small ways, his dreams are always big and larger than life," she said.

Her father, who is now 91 years old, hired the late Alvin Marriott, a popular Jamaican sculptor to design and sculpt the monument.

"My father was attending a party for the daughter of Alvin Marriott, who was Jamaica's leading sculptor at the time. He challenged Marriott to do something big for his country to commemorate Independence," she recalled. "The next day he (Marriott) came up with a drawing and said to my father, "you mean something like this?" and my father said, "exactly like that"."

Scott-McDonald said the drawing was that of "a conical structure with interlocking human figures reaching towards the sky".

According to her, the national monument has been in "the wilderness for too long, and... it is time the monument takes its place as part of the Jamaican landscape."

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