This has got us all excited at Londonist Towers. Remember the cow invasion of 2002? Well, this time it's elephants. Only a lot more of them. Around 250, to be precise.
OK, for those of you who don't recall the cows or have the foggiest idea of what we're wittering about... The idea is that a palette's-worth of elly loving artists are sponsored to create a range of life-sized (baby) pachyderms and, um, decorate them. The creatures are then dotted around the capital to delight residents a provide endless ridiculous photo opportunities for tourists. After a couple of months the majority of the elephants are then auctioned off. All the funds raised from start to finish go to the aid of the Asian elephant, or to be precise to Elephant Family, a charity set up to help save the creatures from extinction.
We actually caught up with (the scarily well organised) Elephant Parade last year in Amsterdam, and it was big fun. There is a peculiar serendipitous pleasure to be had from rounding the corner and finding a street full of gaily painted elephants, and something faintly comical about the design of the elephant in the first place which means it looks great covered in pink flowers. Last year's auction raised in excess of eight hundred thousand euros, a fact which surely renders this one of the world's more successful art-based charity efforts. It is also a great way to get visitors to poke around the more unusual corners of the metropolis as they safari round the elephant trail.
Coming to a park/roundabout/square near you this Summer.
