ELEPHANT PARADE RETURNS TO UK WITH LONDON PREVIEW

Over the last six months, artists around the UK have been decorating elephant statues for the Elephant Parade National Tour (www.intuelephantparade.co.uk) which will be presented in intu’s top shopping centres around the UK from 22 July: A 375-day tour of the UK, visiting 14 cities and towns - featuring 102 elephants – and engaging 30 million people.

The elephant designs have been kept a closely guarded secret for months, but today 13 of the forthcoming tour elephants are making a one-day-only appearance at King’s Cross Station in Central London on 16 July. Since first thing, thousands of people have stopped to take pictures and post messages on social media.

Elephant Parade (www.elephantparade.com) is the world’s largest open air art exhibition of decorated elephant statues that seeks to attract public awareness and support for Asian elephant conservation. Elephant Parade has visited many cities around the world since 2007. For its first ever national tour it has partnered with intu and money raised from the elephants will donated by intu to international conservation charity The Asian Elephant Foundation.

Celebrities are also preparing designs for the tour and thousands of school children around the UK are submitting design ideas, with competition winners gaining commissions to create works to join the tour heard. The tour aims to raise lasting awareness of the conservation issues facing the Asian elephant through art.

Tour sponsor intu was also keen that the new Elephant Parade should be ‘the people’s parade’ with everyone invited to take part. As a result, running alongside the elephant statues will be a digital parade. People of all ages and from all walks of life will be able to download an Elephant Parade template and submit a design idea. Drawing on the state of the art technology in its shopping malls, intu will broadcast these design ideas in the tour venues. Already more than 2,000 designs have been submitted and this week the design templates will be publicly available for download from the tour website – www.intuelephantparade.co.uk. The UK tour is expected to break records for the number of designs involved in a public art exposition as well as being the longest running art exposition of its kind.

Trevor Pereira of tour host intu commented: “The new Elephant Parade is the people’s parade offering opportunities for people from all walks of life to get involved and be part of it. Together, with the touring element of the exposition, King’s Cross, seemed a perfect location. The preview will give a taste of what’s to come and each of the elephants have their own personality, many making reference to the UK regions where they were created. All morning people have be stopping to look at and photograph the designs, there has been a great atmosphere. Elephant Parade will be a festival of colour, a national tour with local flavour, that is previewing in London before the tour herd returns to the Capital to conclude the tour in August 2014.”

For full tour dates visit the tour website: www.intuelephantparade.co.uk.

UK tour press office and event management - contact elephant communications - info@elephantcommunications.co.uk