Shopping Trolley Art

Anglian Water’s ‘RiverCare’ project encourages communities to ‘adopt’ a stretch of their local river and help clean up the riverbanks and waterways. The campaign needed a bit of a membership boost and Dan was asked for ideas.

The ‘Shopping Trolley Art’ campaign was the result: A sculptor (Ptolemy Elrington, seen here surrounded by his 10 sculptures) was commissioned to create sculptures of river-related creatures, made entirely from discarded shopping trolleys pulled from rivers in the Anglian Water region.

His incredible art was then taken on a roadshow around the region, taking the story to the media rather than waiting for them to cover it. Not only did every BBC Local Radio and television station in the region cover the story – BBC Breakfast and Channel 4’s Richard & Judy Show also featured it. The Daily Mail was the first of the National Papers to cover the idea, but perhaps most importantly, the number of people volunteering to get involved in RiverCare more than doubled during the campaign.

The sculptures also proved a useful tool for forging links with many stakeholders such as regulators – they were ‘lent’ to the Environment Agency, Ofwat and Water UK to help promote events and are still used now, 7 years after the initial roadshow, to illustrate the company’s environmental credentials.