Hope Elephant

The Tynemouth Elmer, Hope

lmer’s Great North Parade is organised by and raising vital funds for St Oswald’s Children’s Hospice, a charity providing care, love and support to babies, children and young adults with complex needs.

For 11 weeks, 50 big and 114 little individually painted elephant sculptures are taking over North East streets, parks and public buildings in the biggest and brightest art trail ever seen in the region.

Louise Bradley is a professional painter and printmaker based in Ouseburn, Newcastle upon Tyne. Working with themes including notions of beauty, change, fertility and mortality, she uses plants and flowers she has grown or sourced locally in her colourful and gestural works. The thread running through all her work is a mixture of the biological and the botanical as a universally accessible theme. ‘Hope’ celebrates the positivity, strength and optimism of the patients and their experience at the Great North Children’s Hospital. The wonderful Great North Children’s Hospital staff ensure all children and young people feel safe and comfortable as well as provide learning opportunities through the onsite Bridges school. All visual ideas came from the children and young people who use the hospital, during creative workshop sessions with Louise, who then brought the drawings together in a fun, colourful and playful design. Look for the letters H O P E in the maze and find your way from the h