Elephant day out

Saturday was the big "Meet the Artists and Conservationists" day in London. We packed our bag full of business cards and headed to town. Luckily for us it was a lovely day, probably one of the hottest days this year, so Londoners and tourists alike headed to the parks for a nice picnic and day out. The turn-out was really great, we must have talked to well over 100 people, telling them about our photo competition, about what we do, about the plight of the orangutan and life in general. Hoping more people will start sending us their photos now so that we get a nice selection before the competition closes on the 30th june. 

Everybody loves Harapan

Even the Mounted Branch of the London police force

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Harapan, the painting

And the story about Harapan continues...

We have started getting photos from people who have visited Harapan in Green Park. We are hoping to get loads and loads of photos of you and Harapan so keep sending them in and we will start posting them on our facebook page in a couple of weeks time. For those of you that don't know, we launched a simple photo competition which is open to all, a couple of weeks ago, all you really have to do is go see our elephant in London. Anyway, the lovely Rebecca has just sent us a photo of the painting she is making for the winner of the photo competition. We here at SOS really like it and wish we could have a copy for the office but it's a one off only and will be going straight to one of our photo loving, elephant treasure-hunting supporters!

What do you guys think about it?

  

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The Elephants are Coming to London: photo competition

What are you doing this coming bank holiday Monday?

From 3rd May Harapan, the life-size baby (fibreglass!) elephant can be found in Green Park and we are launching a special elephant/orangutan competition!

It’s really easy to enter, all you have to do is go and visit Harapan, take your photo with him and post it on our Facebook Page or e-mail it to info@orangutans-sos.org and we’ll post it for you.

This is Rebecca Sutherland and Harapan, her creation. 

We want to see how you are enjoying London and the beautiful elephants throughout the summer. The winner will receive an amazing SOS goodie bag which, amongst other things, will contain a one-off original painting of the finished Harapan in acrylic on canvas by Rebecca Sutherland.

Use your imagination and send us pretty, funny, and creative photos. But please, be careful with Harapan so that he doesn’t suffer any damage, we do hope to auction him off to the highest bidder at the end of June to raise funds for our conservation projects.

The competition lasts until the 30th June; which is also the Elephant Parade Mela in the grounds of Royal Chelsea Hospital with Elephant Family Patron Goldie Hawn.

So make the trip to Green Park to visit Harapan and some of his elephant friends.

We look forward to seeing the photos!

Some more info about the Elephant Parade?
Harapan is a part of The Elephant Parade London 2010, which is a conservation campaign that shines a multi-coloured spotlight on the urgent crisis faced by the endangered Asian elephant. Brought to you by www.elephantfamily.org, the event will see over 250 brightly painted life-size elephants located over central London this summer 2010. Each elephant is decorated by a different artist or celebrity, ours by Rebecca Sutherland. The elephants will brighten and beautify the city throughout the summer. The elephants will be enhancing parks, street corners and buildings around London. Running from May to July 2010, this will be London’s biggest outdoor art event on record. With an estimated audience of 25 million, the campaign is aiming to raise £2 million for the Asian elephant and benefit 20 UK conservation charities. The elephants will be auctioned off by Sotheby's on July 3 and all the proceeds from the sale of Harapan will support SOS’s work in Sumatra.

The elephants will be sold through a combination of live, silent and on-line auctions, as well as pre-sales over the course of the week of 23rd – 30th June.

We will post a map showing you the exact locations of the elephants as soon as we get or hands on it!


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