Our primary motivation in creating life size ‘gods of our time’ is to make visible and conversable the concepts which shape our lives, cultures, politics and thinking.

Last summer, we had an improv dialogue between 2 of our ‘gods’ – Lady Luck and Lady Justice – (see above), the context being their joint appearance on a TV Chat Show. They disagreed on a lot of things but the two discovered a shared scepticism of the fairness of a society based on meritocracy.

A recent article by Will Snell of the Fairness Foundation reminded me of their conversation. Will’s question was: ” Could encouraging successful people to acknowledge the role that luck has played in their lives help to challenge our collective self-delusion about living in a meritocracy?”.

He described a recent interview with the comedian, Trevor Noah who, when asked what he wished for in this context, suggested “At regular intervals, say every 17 months or so, everyone’s bank account would be randomly swapped with someone else’s. Every time I say this I can guess the rough size of my audience members’ accounts based on whether they cheer or squirm in response to this idea. But jokes aside, I imagine we’d live much differently because this shuffle would force us to grapple with how much of our lives are determined by sheer luck — depending on when and where and in which skin and to whom we are born. Too often wealthy people are praised as innovative and scrappy. A grandmother in an African village who manages to feed her entire family with so little is the most innovative and scrappy, but we rarely hear her story. It would do us all well to avoid wearing our luck as our achievements.“

Ah… but would Lady Justice view that as a ‘just’ suggestion?