Fundraising art trails for this Spring & Summer
Melanie May | 16 April 2024 | News
Brightening up the streets of cities across the UK this Spring and Summer are more fundraising art trails.
Offering maps, apps, and raising funds for good causes, they are generally in partnership with Wild in Art, which to date has delivered over 130 public art trails, raising £26.3 million for charity partners across the world.
Here’s a range of those on offer, along with some news on the money raised by one of last year’s trails and a heads up on a new one for 2025.
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Guide Dogs’ Pause on the Wharf, is an accessible and inclusive art trail running from 25 March – 17 May 2024 and bringing a collection of larger-than-life guide dog sculptures to Canary Wharf in London.
Organised by Guide Dogs and Wild in Art, supported by Citi and hosted by Canary Wharf Group and Canal & River Trust, Paws on the Wharf aims to raise awareness and funds to help people with sight loss live more active and independent lives.
Cambridge Standing Tall is a city-wide trail in the city of 31 large giraffe sculptures – three of which are sponsored by the University – supporting Break, a charity working with young people in and around care in the East of England.
It runs from 21 March to 2 June.
Elmer’s Big Parade in Blackpool is being organised by Brian House Children’s Hospice in partnership with Wild in Art and Andersen Press. It is expected to raise over £110,000 for Brian House. It runs from 13 April to 9 June, and there are more than 70 sculptures inspired by David McKee’s popular children’s character Elmer the Patchwork Elephant in key locations through the town. One of them has been designed by Laurence Llewelyn-Bowen.
Shaun the Sheep in the Heart of Kent begins on 29 June and runs until 30 August in Maidstone. It will be raising funds for Heart of Kent Hospice. It will see up to 50 large individually decorated Shaun the Sheep sculptures placed around the parks, town centre and river walks in Maidstone and the surrounding areas.
One for later in the year: running from 13 July to 8 September, people will be invited to take part in the Light the South trail in Southampton and Cowes where there will be 40 8ft lighthouses, and 40 mini lighthouses.
The trail is raising funds for Southampton Hospitals Charity.
The Big Fun Art Adventure is organised by North London Hospice, with support from Haringey Council and in partnership with Wild in Art. There will be around 30 large owl sculptures to find, along with a number of smaller owls adopted and designed by local schools and community groups. The parliament of owls will swoop into Haringey on 17 August until 13 October.
Last year’s Tortoise Takeover raised £720,000 for Jersey Zoo. Fifty-four Tortoise Takeover sculptures went to auction on 21 September for Durrell Wildlife Conservation Trust and raised a staggering £720,500.
The ‘Not Fast Food’ tortoise by artist Donna Newman was the highest-selling tortoise, going for £26,000. The evening also saw a new record for the auctioning of a Wild in Art sculpture when the special Hare sculpture Love To Run, Painted by Jersey artist Nick Romeril, sold for £100,000. The hare beat the previous record of £72,000 for ‘The Space Between Us’ gorilla from the Go Wild Gorillas auction in 2019.
Looking ahead to next year, Wild in Art is returning to Birmingham in summer 2025 with a new art trail, based on the city’s bronze bull, in partnership with Birmingham Hospice.
This will be Wild In Art’s seventh visit to Birmingham, with previous trails bringing animal sculptures including owls, bears, a penguins, and Snowdogs to the city. There have also been trails BookBenches, and human form sculptures, as part of Gratitude, Wild in Art’s first touring installation, which celebrated the contributions of NHS staff and all key workers during the pandemic.
About Melanie May
Melanie May is a journalist and copywriter specialising in writing both for and about the charity and marketing services sectors since 2001. She can be reached via thepurplepim.com.