With just under two weeks to go, we’re busy getting ready to unveil our spectacular Worcester Stands Tall giraffe sculptures on Monday, July 9.

Behind-the-scenes, there’s a flurry of activity taking place to prepare each beautifully painted giraffe for the 10-week display – with a fantastic logistics team working to make the art trail a reality.

Getting 57 fibreglass giraffes attached to plinths and safely out onto the streets of Worcester is no mean feat – and it has taken months of careful planning to ensure installation goes smoothly.

Each sculpture will now be securely attached to concrete or steel plinths and arranged in clusters for distribution, before being transported to various locations around the city where they will be installed.

Alongside preparing for installation, we’re also putting the finishing touches to our website and working to create an app which will allow trail ‘explorers’ to track their progress as they take on the trail, uncovering facts about the city along the way.

We’ve been creating our trail map – which will be available during the trail from Worcester Tourist Information Centre, Worcester Cathedral, Crowngate Shopping Centre and the Worcester Stands Tall pop-up shop, also in Crowngate.

Alongside all this, we’re getting ready to hold our ‘Safari Walk’ on July 22nd – sourcing goodies for our ‘explorers’ and putting plans in place to make sure it’s a really fun day out.

It’s great to see so many people getting excited for the trail on social media, creating a real buzz around the event. We can’t wait to see all the giraffe selfies (or gir-elfies) once the trail goes live!

Each sculpture is absolutely beautiful and we just know the trail will be an unmissable event this summer. Of the 57 sculptures, there will be 30, 8ft tall giraffes decorated by artists and 26 smaller calves which have been painted by schools and community groups – with one more calf in a location yet to be revealed.

At the end of the trail, each large sculpture will be auctioned to raise money for our St Richard’s Hospice Build 2020 Appeal.

So make sure you come and join us to ‘have a giraffe’ in Worcester this summer!

For more information, or to find out how to get involved, visit worcesterstandstall.co.uk

Sara Matthews

Worcester Stands Tall Project Manager, St Richard’s Hospice