ELEPHANT PARADE KICKS OFF NATIONAL TOUR TODAY

Top celebrities including Claudia Schiffer, Alex Jones and Rylan Clark join artists, communities and school children to take part in the people’s parade

Today, a brand new herd of Elephant Parade elephant statues will gather for the first time at intuWatford to begin a 375-day tour of the UK that will visit 14 towns and cities and reach more than 30 million people. Claudia Schiffer, Alex Jones, Rylan Clark, Magnetic Man and Mercy Delta are among the public figures contributing to the tour.

More than two dozen elephants will be at intuWatford for the start of Elephant Parade today and at each leg of their journey they will be joined by six community designed elephants. More than 100 elephants will take part in the tour which concludes in London in July 2014 after visiting venues around the UK, including Manchester, Glasgow, Cardiff, Nottingham and Newcastle. Main sponsor intu has made the national tour possible, opening the doors of its major shopping centres around the UK, allowing Elephant Parade to connect with a bigger audience than would be possible from a single city exposition outdoors, limited to the summer months.

Elephant Parade has travelled the world, its vibrantly decorated statues raising awareness of and funds for the conservation of the Asian Elephant. Money raised from the sale of the tour elephants will be donated by sponsor intu to international charity, The Asian Elephant Foundation.

intu was keen that the new Elephant Parade should be ‘the people’s parade’ with everyone invited to take part. As well as involving school children for the first time ever, a digital tour will run alongside the 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 submitted by people from all walks of life. 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, meaning that the UK tour is expected to break records for the number of designs involved in a public art exposition.

The elephant line up brings together artist creations from around the UK and many of the designs make reference to British icons. From aeroplanes, to British cathedrals and fishing villages - the designs celebrate many UK regions. Other designs that feature are a strawberry ice cream, classic British sweets, banana leaves, and a modern Union jack. There will be a princess for the girls and a pirate for the boys. And stunning fine art creations for art collectors – including the first ever elephant created from charcoal. Uniting the professional artists and the school designs, two of the elephants were the result of creative collaboration between primary school children and professional artists. The Watford launch will be the first time the opening tour herd has come together, and the first time many of the artists will meet (for more information on the artists and the stories behind the designs, see notes to editors).

Supermodel, Claudia Schiffer has created a dramatic elephant design to feature in the Elephant Parade national tour which will be revealed at the launch on Monday. Claudia said: "I love elephants and so I went with my family to the previous Elephant Parade in London.  My children were fascinated by them and we ended up taking a picture with each elephant. We're all so excited to be part of this great fund raising initiative.”  

Trevor Pereira, Commercial Director at intu said: “We’re thrilled to be opening the tour at intuWatford before it moves on to other towns and cities. The local team has lots planned the four weeks Elephant Parade is in Watford, including some fabulous school elephants from the local community that will join the tour herd. Some of the national artists will be visiting intuWatford to run elephant painting weekends and there will be opportunities for people to learn about the conservation issues. Additionally, if people want to buy little replicas of their favorite elephants, there will be an elephant shop in store for the duration of the tour. It’s going to be a fun month and on behalf of the intu team, everyone’s invited!”

For more information, high resolution images, to arrange interviews with Elephant Parade, intu or selected participating artists contact the UK tour press office:

Harriet Powell: 07738 160961 harriet@elephantcommunications.co.uk

Lindsay Marino: 07581 180501 lindsay@elephantcommunications.co.uk

Find out more about the tour, venues, artists and how to get involved: www.intuelephantparade.com

Get involved in the conversation at www.facebook.com/elephantparadefan or tweet using #eletour

For more media materials and to register for future announcements, follow the Elephant Parade newsroom: http://www.mynewsdesk.com/uk/pressroom/elephant-parade