Y&R Bring Women of Stature to the Streets

Take a look around your city and you may notice that many of the statues elevated on pedestals are male.

Y&R New York has introduced The Whole Story Project, an AR initiative aimed at celebrating female lives and getting notable women to reach the same level of recognition, much like the Hidden Figures project from earlier this year.

Partnering with Current Studios and the National Collaborative for Women’s History Sites (NCWHS), Y&R has created a mobile app that allows users to explore local female role models by pointing devices at existing male statues to conjure an AR woman of equal prestige.

The initiative launched when Women in the World Summit founder Tina Brown placed the first virtual statue in Dante Park (below).

From this, various other statues have been located around Central Park to commemorate the lives of important females, like singer/musician Nina Simone, novelist Edith Wharton and US politician Shirley Chisholm.

Other cities have also got involved, meaning that you can now roam around London, Prague, Milan and Rome in search of your favourite heroines. And the agency’s Sao Paulo, Buenos Aires and Moscow offices are also set to take part.

“Until we break the bronze ceiling, The Whole Story Project gives immediate voice to the stories of so many brave women, who have been part of building and bettering our nation,” said NCWHS Coline Jenkins, who laid her great-great grandmother great-great grandmother, suffragist Elizabeth Cady Stanton in Central Park.

So, don’t delay in downloading the app via the Apple Store or Google Play and discover stories of female leaders around your city.