Listly by Howard Lake
Following the original Cow Parade, which has now travelled the world, many charities have run fundraising campaigns using large fibreglass animals.
Gromit sculptures are being unleashed upon the city of Bristol by The Grand Appeal and Aardman Animations to raise funds for Bristol Children's Hospital. It raised £3.5m for Wallace & Gromit's Grand Appeal for the Bristol Royal Hospital for Children.
Pride of Cape Town was a world class, major public arts event that sees a fabulous pride of life-size lion sculptures, designed and painted by talented local artists, prowling the iconic V&A Waterfront for 8 weeks in the summer if 2013 in aid of international wildlife charity, the Born Free Foundation.
GoGoGorillas! Charity Fundraising Auction - On Thursday 3 October our 53 wonderful large gorilla sculptures were auctioned off to help raise money for two charities - Break and Born Free Foundation. Thanks to your amazing support on the night we raised £272,300, We are blown away by this, so thank you all. Money was raised for Born Free Foundation and Break.
2008's Go Elephants! was a free public art event which involved around 50 elephant sculptures on display around Norwich's public spaces. The elephants were auctioned and raised over £200,000 for CLIC Sargent and The Born Free Foundation.
CowParade started off this phenomenon in Chicago in 1999. It is the largest and most successful public art event in the world. CowParade events have been staged in over 75 cities worldwide since 1999 including Chicago (1999), New York City (2000), London (2002), Tokyo (2003), and Brussels (2003).
Stand Tall for Giraffes has been celebrating the 50th birthday of Colchester Zoo and culminated on 19th September when all the 2.5 metre giraffes were auctioned to raise funds for conservation through Colchester Zoo's charity Action for the Wild.
Wild Dolphins was a mass public art event in Aberdeen from the 23rd June - 29th August 2014. The auction of fibreglass dolphins raised £531,000 for The ARCHIE Foundation, the official charity of the Royal Aberdeen Children’s Hospital, and Whale and Dolphin Conservation (WDC).
The Big Hoot in Birmingham (20 July – 27 September 2015) saw hundreds of thousands of people taking to the streets with their Big Hoot Trail maps to explore the colourful invasion of individually designed owls. Taking in the city’s 10 districts, tourists and residents alike enjoyed their owl adventure, discovering and celebrating the extraordinary creativity produced by many of Birmingham’s artistic community and over 25,000 young people.
The Big Hoot owls went under the hammer on 15 October 2015 at The Big Hoot auction sponsored by Vodafone and we are thrilled to have smashed our target by raising the incredible sum of £508,035!
The money raised from the auction will support Birmingham Children’s Hospital Charity’s £3.65m Star Appeal.
In addition it raised £15,000 for G’owl’d by Temper with proceeds going to Edward’s Trust, and £7,800 for Fleet and Free with proceeds going to Birchfield Harriers.
The Grand Appeal has brought statues of Gromit from ‘The Greatest Dog Show on Earth’ in Hong Kong to Bristol for a 10-week exhibition in February 2016 which will raise further funds for the Bristol Children’s Hospital charity.
Summer 2016 sees 50 individually painted Oor Wullie sculptures placed across Dundee and Tayside to pay for a new operating suite at Tayside’s Children Hospital.
A public art trail featuring giant six foot jars will come to London this summer, marking the realise of the new children’s film The BFG and raising funds for Save the Children and Roald Dahl’s Marvellous Children’s Charity.
The latest Tweets from Marwell's ZanyZebras (@ZanyZebras2016). Stampeding through #Southampton & Marwell Zoo from 16 July - 25 September 2016. Follow @gilbertthezebra for a zebra eye view!. Southampton & Marwell zoo
St Elizabeth Hospice has teamed up with Wild in Art to stage Suffolk’s biggest ever mass-participation, public art event – Pigs Gone Wild. The interactive sculpture trail will feature more than 40 pigs across Ipswich and beyond. This summer, from 27 June to 2 September, you will be able to follow the trail, collect points with our Pigs Gone Wild app and to try to see as many of the sculptures as possible.
An absolutely roarsome, lion-inspired, public art trail will become Paisley’s ‘mane’ event for ten weeks, from 9th July – 25th September 2016. All the lion sculptures will be auctioned, with proceeds split between ACCORD Hospice, in Paisley, and St Vincent’s Hospice, in Howwood. Paisley Museum’s popular exhibit – ‘Buddy the Lion’ – has inspired the project.
The Martlets Hospice has teamed up with Wild in Art and Penguin to stage an extraordinary public art trail in Brighton & Hove. The magical sculpture trail features 45 giant Snowdog sculptures, inspired by the much loved animated short film, The Snowman™ and The Snowdog .
The 60 Herdwick ewe statues were display over the summer along the bus route from Kendal to Keswick, sponsored by businesses and organisations from across Cumbria. The 2016 campaign raised £250,000 for Lake District Calvert Trust.
MegaMorph, a 3-metre high model of the children's TV character, is part of a new exhibition to raise funds for Bristol's The Grand Appeal.
Herd of the Hospice? is a free, public art installation and the first of its kind in the area. From July-September 2017, a herd of uniquely decorated horse sculptures will be exhibited across West Kent and East Sussex.
Designed and painted by local artists and generously sponsored by local businesses; our ‘herd’ will be displayed in parks and other public spaces to generate a positive atmosphere and encourage public interaction, draw people to local areas and create a fun experience for the community we serve.
The free public art trail in Birmingham in Summer 2017 features 100 giant sun bears appearing around the city for ten weeks, before they’re auctioned off with all proceeds going to Birmingham Children’s Hospital.
Dudley Zoological Gardens joined in by hosting a bear.
Thirty wolf sculptures were placed in and around the centre of Wolverhampton, to raise funds for local charities.
The Wolves in Wolves public art trail runs from 5th July to 24th September and is a joint project between City of Wolverhampton Council, local disability arts charity Outside Centre, and Wolverhampton BID. The wolves form a trail of approximately 4.5 miles.
Income from sponsorship of the wolf sculptures by local businesses together with auction sales of the wolves will be donated to the Outside Centre and the Mayor’s charities, which include Central Youth Theatre, LGBT Network, and Interfaith Wolverhampton.
The BIG Stampede is a Wild in Art event bringing businesses, artists and schools together to create a spectacular world-class sculpture trail through the streets, parks and open spaces of Hamilton and the surrounding areas.
From 23 June to 3 September 2017 a herd of elephants, tower of giraffes, pride of lions, band of gorillas and crash of rhinos charged into town, each individually decorated by local professional artists and schools.
An auction of the sculptures raised over £90,000 for Glasgow Children’s Hospital Charity.
A major public art sculpture trail featuring 100 individually decorated owl sculptures displayed across the World Heritage city of Bath and surrounding region from June – September 2018.
Minerva’s Owls of Bath 2018 will run for three months from the end of June to celebrate Bath’s Roman heritage and raise funds for local charities including the Royal United Hospital’s new Cancer Centre and the UK Little Owl Project.
Norwich's GoGoDragons! were seen by many as the stars of summer 2015, and new statistics reveal the full extent of the dragon effect that swept across Norwich.
On average people spent about 15 hours looking for the 84 winged warriors – equating in total to an incredible eight million hours of dragon hunting. It is thought the event contributed an impressive £2.5m to the local economy.
The auction of the dragons raised £369,500.
GoGoHares took place in 2018 as part of Break's 50th anniversary celebrations. The sculpture trail of 50 Hares took place in Norwich and around Norfolk.
The sculpture auction at the end of the campaign raised £409,600. Heptahare, which was covered in 50p coins to mark the anniversary, and an undecorated hare were the joint-biggest sellers at £21,000.
Cows about Cambridge will see cow sculptures appear across the city for 10 weeks in spring 2020. Cow sculptures, each one individually decorated by an artist and sponsored by a business, will a free, fun, family-friendly trail of discovery to explore and enjoy.
The sculptures will, as in GoGoHares, GoGoGorillas, and GoGoDragons, raise money for children's charity Break.
Digital fundraising entrepreneur, publisher of UK Fundraising (www.fundraising.co.uk) since 1994, the world's first web resource for charity fundraisers. And founder of Fundraising Camp.