An environmentally friendly design for the latest Elmer sculpture to join the big parade next year has been unveiled by the St Elizabeth Hospice.
Elmer’s Big Parade follows the success of the Pigs Gone Wild trail last year and will coincide with the 30th anniversary of both the hospice and Elmer books by David McKee.
Jason Alexander, aka The Wildlife Gadget Man, will be designing the hospice’s own piece which will be based on the original Elmer design.
However, instead of using paint to create the design Mr Alexander will be using waste plastic collected from his well-known Rubbish Walks.
Mr Alexander said: “When I heard about next summer’s Elmer campaign it just made sense to me to get in touch and see if there was some way I could get involved.
“The issues we are experiencing with the amount of rubbish – and in particular single-use plastic – that is being discarded are massive and it is really important to me to both help clean up our own neighbourhoods and also to help people understand the impact that this is having on our world.
Members of the public will be able to go out and about to help Mr Alexander collect the materials needed to create the sculpture, with more details set to be released soon.
Elmer’s Big Parade follows the success of the Pigs Gone Wild trail last year and will coincide with the 30th anniversary of both the hospice and the much-loved children’s books Elmer the Patchwork Elephant by David McKee.
It will see 50 individually-designed elephants placed in an art trail around Ipswich from June to September 2019.
This is the town’s second art trail and will raise money for the hospice.Campaign Manager Norman Lloyd, said: “The Elmer stories have strong environmental themes, celebrating the natural world and the protection of animals in the wild, so this partnership feels like a perfect fit for our sculpture. We hope that we will be able to involve our sponsors and Learning Herd members in the collection of plastic and the creation of our sculpture, making it a real team effort.”
Mark Millar, chief executive at St Elizabeth Hospice, said: “Here at the hospice we are well aware of how important it is to reduce our impact on the environment, both on site at our various locations, and out and about in our local community, and over the last 18 months have really increased our efforts to improve our processes.
“I am really pleased that we can work with Jason to get others involved too and help spread this message even further through Elmer’s Big Parade Suffolk.”
Calls for sculpture designs closed last week with more than 200 submissions being received by organisers.
Mr Lloyd added: “I’m so glad it isn’t me who has to decide which of the designs go through to the next stage! It is so tricky at this point, as we have got so many brilliant designs that we really want to show off, but until they have been shortlisted, and then matched with a sponsor, we have to keep things strictly under wraps.”
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