It starts in the flood
Rock and plants at the base call up Jamaica’s landscape, and the floodwater Hurricane Melissa drove through it. A broken light pole is built into the monument, a reminder of everyone who suffered in the storm.
TogetherWeRise
Two hands rise from the ground to hold up a torch, its flame a Tree of Life. Jamaica’s largest monument, sculpted by Scheed Cole after Hurricane Melissa.
Skip the climb
Nine Jamaicans
Nine figures climb the two arms, each one helping the next. A soldier reaches for a woman about to let go. An elder passes a baby up to safety. Down here, the faces are strained.
No one rises alone
Climb higher and the expressions change. Music, faith, farming, building, sport and cooking all appear among the figures, and every one of them holds on to the next. Linked together, they form an arch you can walk beneath.
Wood and water
Jamaica is the Land of Wood and Water, so the monument carries both. Waterfalls run through the arms, and more than 70 live plants grow on it.
Hands that hold a torch
Christopher Issa imagined a torch, like the Olympic flame or the one the Statue of Liberty holds up. Scheed Cole gave it two hands, rising out of the ground and gripping it together.
Steel you’re meant to see
Above the grip, the framework is left bare on purpose: the skeleton of reconstruction, and a reminder of what rebuilding takes. It is engineered to stand up to severe winds.
A Tree of Life for a flame
The torch’s flame is a Tree of Life, with leaves from 14 different Jamaican trees. For Cole, the tree can only grow once people cross the divide and come together.
More than 62 feet, for 1962
Jamaica’s largest monument rises more than 62 feet. Christopher Issa chose the height to honour 1962, the year of Independence. After dark, the torch is lit.
See the photosUp close
Photographs of the finished monument. Select any photo to see it full size.
After dark
Drag across the monument to move from day into night. In daylight the canopy reads as silver and gilded steel. After dark the torch is lit, and the Tree of Life glows over the boulevard like the flame it was designed to be.
How it began
It started with a blank hotel wall, and a hummingbird.
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A monument left unfinished
Soon after Independence in 1962, sculptor Alvin Marriott conceived a monument of some 300 interlocking Jamaicans, climbing toward the new nation’s awakening. It was never completed; its eight-foot base still stands at the Harbour View roundabout. Together We Rise is not a recreation of it, but it carries the same image forward.
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A wall waiting for something
In 2019, as S Hotel Montego Bay neared completion, Christopher Issa searched for something spectacular for its wall facing Jimmy Cliff Boulevard, about 50 feet tall and 25 feet wide. Murals were designed, but none captured Jamaica’s many sides. A giant LED screen, which would have been the largest in Jamaica, felt too much like Times Square. Jamaica deserved something more.
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A call from New York
On a trip to New York in early 2025, Issa saw the giant ostrich and giraffe on Louis Vuitton’s flagship store by Central Park, and called Scheed Cole on the spot. The idea: a 46-foot doctor bird, Jamaica’s national bird, on the side of the hotel.
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The bird lands
Cole never shows a work while he’s making it, so Issa first saw the bird in August 2025, as it was being installed. It wasn’t a flat bird on a wall. Cole had made a fully three-dimensional sculpture, its head tilted away from the building. It was an immediate hit, and people drove the Hip Strip just to see it.
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A bird can’t fly on one wing
Next came suggestions to do something in Kingston, and designs were drawn for Trafalgar Road beside S Hotel Kingston. But a bird can’t really fly on one wing. The hummingbird needed company, and the Hip Strip could use another landmark. The plan became a second statue at St James Plaza, where Diedel Klöver’s 12-foot Usain Bolt, made of nuts and bolts, already stood. It would be a tribute to Jamaican music: mento, ska, reggae and dancehall.
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“Is the bird still there?”
Hurricane Melissa struck in October 2025, three months after the bird was finished. People calling to check on the hotel asked first whether the bird was still there, and only then how the hotel was doing. A tribute to the music was no longer enough. Issa called Cole and told him:
“We need to do something on a national and an international level. Something inspirational for Jamaica and for the world.”
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A torch, held by two hands
After the storm, Issa suggested a torch, like the Olympic flame or the Statue of Liberty’s. Cole made its flame a Tree of Life with leaves from 14 Jamaican trees, held up by two giant hands coming out of the ground, with nine Jamaicans helping each other up the arms to reach it. Issa asked for wood and water, and Cole added waterfalls in the arms and more than 70 live plants. And so Together We Rise was born.
Walk around the build
Jamaicans built it, every one of them: a crew of more than 35, welders among them, with structural engineering and ground testing behind it. It had to stand up to severe winds, no small brief for a work born from a hurricane. Scheed Cole prefers not to show a work until it’s finished, so these photos are a rare look at one in progress. Drag to circle it, and tap the front photo to open it.
Stand beneath it
5 Jimmy Cliff Boulevard, St James Plaza, Montego Bay
On the Hip Strip beside S Hotel Montego Bay, a few minutes from Sangster International Airport. Walk through the arch between the two arms, look for the 46-foot doctor bird on the side of the hotel, then come back after dark to see the torch lit.
Get directionsSculpted by Scheed Cole, from a concept by Christopher Issa and Scheed Cole. Commissioned by Christopher Issa and S Hotels Jamaica as a gift to Jamaica.
- 62+
- feet tall. The height honours 1962, the year of Independence.
- 9
- Jamaicans climb the two arms, each one helping the next.
- 14
- Jamaican trees gave their leaves to the Tree of Life.
- 70+
- live plants grow on it, with waterfalls running through the arms.
- 35+
- Jamaicans built it, welders among them.
18°29′17″ N 77°55′40″ W