Shaun in the City was a public charity arts trail organised by Wallace & Gromit's Children's Foundation and Aardman Animations, in which 120 giant, artist and celebrity-decorated fibreglass sculptures of Shaun the Sheep were displayed in famous locations and green spaces around London and Bristol. [1] The first 50 Shaun sculptures appeared in London from 28 March to 31 May 2015, with a further 70 Shaun sculptures appearing in Bristol from 6 July to 31 August 2015.
The charity project aims to raise funds for sick children in hospitals across the UK, with funds from the London trail supporting Wallace & Gromit’s Children’s Charity, and funds from the Bristol trail supporting Wallace & Gromit’s Grand Appeal, the Bristol Children's Hospital Charity. It follows on from Gromit Unleashed, a charity arts trail which saw 80 sculptures of Gromit placed on the streets of Bristol in 2013, raising £2.3 million at auction for The Grand Appeal. [2]
Created by Nick Park of Aardman Animations, Shaun the Sheep is an unusually clever sheep who first appeared in the 1995 Oscar-winning short film A Close Shave, helping Wallace and Gromit to rescue his flock from being turned into dog food by a malfunctioning robotic dog. [3] In 2007 he was given his own stop-motion animated television series, and in 2015 he starred in a feature-length movie, titled Shaun the Sheep the Movie. In 2014 he was voted the nation's favourite children's television character in a poll conducted by the Radio Times and the British Film Institute. [4] [5]
On 24 March 2015, Shaun in the City launched to the public and press in London. A number of sculptures were driven across Tower Bridge and London Bridge on a trailer drawn by a tractor. Nick Park, creator of Shaun the Sheep, was also in attendance, helping to unveil more sculptures in a sheep pen near the Thames. [6]
The 50 London sculptures were placed in famous locations and green spaces around the capital including Trafalgar Square, Tower Bridge, The London Eye, Covent Garden, St. James's Park, and The Shard.
The charity also launched a dedicated Shaun in the City Youtube Channel, showing films promoting the trails and app, interviews with celebrity designers including David Gandy, and behind-the-scenes videos of artists at work.
The Bristol trail launched on 2 July 2015, with Shaun the Sheep creator Nick Park driving a vintage tractor across Clifton Suspension Bridge, pulling a trailer containing several sculptures. [7]
The 70 sculptures were then distributed around the city for the beginning of the trail on 6 July, with locations including Bristol Temple Meads station, Bristol Harbourside, Clifton Suspension Bridge, Staple Hill, and Bedminster. [8] Designs were again contributed by artists and celebrities, with VIP designs including Bagpuss Shaun by Bagpuss creator Peter Firmin, and Sheepish, a giant pink poodle created by fashion designer Wayne Hemingway. [9] Aardman Directors Nick Park and Peter Lord also designed Shaun sculptures.
The charity organisers also created the Shaun in the City: Nature Explorer, a booklet of activities intended to get young children engaging with nature and learning about the environment as they visited six sculptures in green locations throughout Bristol during the trail. [10]
Wallace & Gromit's Grand Appeal and the digital team at Aardman Animations developed an interactive app called Shaun in the City: Sheep Spotter for the two trails, available for Apple and Android devices. Within 24 hours of release the app took the number one spot in the Apple iTunes App Store chart for paid-for apps. [11] By the middle of the Bristol trail over 1,000,000 sculptures had been ticked off using the app, which also allowed visitors to complete special trails, learn about the sculptures and artists, and earn interactive trophies.
Following the end of the Bristol trail, all 120 Shaun sculptures from both the London and Bristol trails were united for two special 'Great Sheep Round Up' exhibitions, the first in Bristol at The Mall at Cribbs Causeway, and the second in London's Covent Garden. [12] [13] There was extremely high public demand for tickets for the Bristol exhibition, with over 25,000 visitors attending over the course of nine days. [14]
On 8 October 2015 all 120 sculptures were auctioned to raise money for sick children in hospitals across the UK, in a special evening hosted by Sotheby's auctioneer and TV presenter Tim Wonnacott. Money raised from the London sculptures benefited Wallace & Gromit's Children's Charity, and money raised from the Bristol sculptures benefited The Grand Appeal, the Bristol Children's Hospital Charity. 5 miniature Shauns – ‘Little Princess’, ‘Jetsetter’, ‘Catch of the Day’, and two Shauns decorated by young patients in Bristol – were also auctioned in aid of Bristol Children's Hospital.
The auction raised £1,087,900 in total for the two charities. [15] The Shaun sculpture which attracted the highest bid on the night was ‘Globetrotter’ by Sarah Matthews, selling for £28,000. [16] ‘Sparkles the Unicorn’ by Emily Golden was also the subject of a bidding war, finally selling for £25,000. [17]
Wallace and Gromit is a British stop-motion animated comedy franchise created by Nick Park and produced by Aardman Animations. The main film series consists of four short films and one feature-length film, and has spawned numerous spin-offs and TV adaptations. The series centres on Wallace, a good-natured, eccentric, cheese-loving inventor, and Gromit, his loyal and intelligent anthropomorphic beagle. The first short film, A Grand Day Out, was finished and made public in 1989. Wallace was voiced by actor Peter Sallis until 2010 when he was succeeded by Ben Whitehead. While Wallace speaks very often, Gromit is largely silent and has no dialogue, communicating through facial expressions and body language.
Aardman Animations Limited is a British animation studio based in Bristol, England. It is known for films and television series made using stop-motion and clay animation techniques, particularly those featuring its plasticine characters from Wallace and Gromit, Shaun the Sheep, and Morph. After some experimental computer-animated short films during the late 1990s, beginning with Owzat (1997), Aardman entered the computer animation market with Flushed Away (2006). As of February 2020, it had earned $1.1 billion worldwide, with an average $135.6 million per film.
Nicholas Wulstan Park is an English filmmaker and animator who created Wallace and Gromit, Creature Comforts, Chicken Run, Shaun the Sheep, and Early Man. Park has been nominated for an Academy Award a total of six times and won four with Creature Comforts (1989), The Wrong Trousers (1993), A Close Shave (1995) and Wallace & Gromit: The Curse of the Were-Rabbit (2005).
Wallace and Gromit: A Close Shave is a 1995 British stop-motion animated short film co-written and directed by Nick Park and produced by Aardman Animations with Wallace and Gromit Ltd., BBC Bristol and BBC Children's International. It is the third film featuring Wallace and Gromit, following A Grand Day Out (1989) and The Wrong Trousers (1993). A Close Shave won the Academy Award for Best Animated Short Film. A Close Shave saw the first appearance of Shaun, who became the main character of the Shaun the Sheep spin-off series.
The Wrong Trousers is a 1993 British stop-motion animated short film co-written and directed by Nick Park, featuring his characters Wallace and Gromit, and was produced by Aardman Animations in association with Wallace and Gromit Ltd., BBC Bristol, Lionheart Television and BBC Children's International. It is the second film featuring the eccentric inventor Wallace and his dog Gromit, following A Grand Day Out (1989). In the film, a villainous penguin, Feathers McGraw, posing as a lodger, recruits Wallace by using his techno-trousers to steal a diamond from the city museum.
Morph is a British series of clay stop-motion comedy animations, named after the main character, who is a small terracotta-skinned plasticine man, who speaks an unintelligible language and lives on a tabletop, his bedroom being a small wooden box. The character was initially seen interacting with Tony Hart, beginning in 1977, on several of his British television programmes, notably Take Hart, Hartbeat and SMart.
Shaun the Sheep is a British stop-motion animated silent comedy children's television series which is developed by Aardman Animations. A spin-off in the Wallace and Gromit franchise, the series focuses on the adventures of Shaun, the eponymous sheep previously starring in A Close Shave, as the leader of his flock on a northern English farm. The series premiered on 5 March 2007 on CBBC in the UK, also airing on BBC Two. Since 2020, the series is streamed globally on Netflix. In March 2024, it was announced that the seventh series is in development and will premiere in 2025. With 170 episodes over 6 series, Shaun the Sheep is one of the longest-running animated series in British television.
Timothy Wonnacott is an English chartered auctioneer, chartered surveyor, antiques expert, narrator, and a television presenter. He was previously a director of Sotheby's, one of the world's oldest auction houses.
Bristol Royal Hospital for Children, also known as the Bristol Children's Hospital, is a paediatric hospital in Bristol and the only paediatric major trauma centre in South West England. The hospital is part of the University Hospitals Bristol and Weston NHS Foundation Trust (UHBW), which includes eight other hospitals. The hospital is located next to the Bristol Royal Infirmary in the city centre.
United Kingdom Animation began at the very origins of the art form in the late 19th century. British animation has been strengthened by an influx of émigrés to the UK; renowned animators such as Lotte Reiniger (Germany), John Halas (Hungary), George Dunning and Richard Williams (Canada), Terry Gilliam and Tim Burton have all worked in the UK at various stages of their careers. Notable full-length animated features to be produced in the UK include Animal Farm (1954), Yellow Submarine (1968), Watership Down (1978), and Wallace & Gromit: The Curse of the Were-Rabbit (2005).
Burges Salmon LLP is a law firm based in Bristol, England.
Timmy Time is a British stop-motion animated television programme for preschoolers created and produced by Bob the Builder producer Jackie Cockle for the BBC's CBeebies and produced by Aardman Animations. It started broadcasting in the United Kingdom on 6 April 2009. It is a spin-off of Shaun the Sheep, itself a spin-off of the Wallace and Gromit film A Close Shave (1995).
Christopher Sadler is a British animator, director and writer. He is primarily known for his work on Wallace and Gromit, Chicken Run, Rex the Runt, Cracking Contraptions, Creature Comforts and Shaun the Sheep.
David Alexander Riddett BSC is a prominent English cinematographer mostly known for his work at Aardman Animations.
Shaun the Sheep Movie is a 2015 stop-motion animated adventure comedy film written and directed by Richard Starzak and Mark Burton. It is based on the British television series Shaun the Sheep, in turn a spin-off of the Wallace and Gromit film A Close Shave (1995). Starring the voices of Justin Fletcher, John Sparkes, and Omid Djalili, the film follows Shaun and his flock navigating the big city to save their amnesiac farmer, while an overzealous animal control worker pursues the group. It was produced by Aardman Animations, and financed by StudioCanal in association with Anton Capital Entertainment.
Gromit Unleashed was a public charity art trail led by Wallace & Gromit's Grand Appeal and Aardman Animations, in which 80 giant artist-decorated fibreglass sculptures of Gromit were displayed on the streets of Bristol and the surrounding area between 1 July and 8 September 2013. At the end of the art trail, the sculptures were auctioned to raise funds for Wallace & Gromit's Grand Appeal, the Bristol Children's Hospital Charity. The Grand Appeal pledged to raise £3.5 million for state-of-the-art equipment for Bristol Children's Hospital, including an intraoperative MRI scanner, family facilities and child-friendly artwork to help save the lives of sick children at the hospital. All funds raised by Gromit Unleashed contributed towards this. The project follows the concept of the "Land in Sicht", the original Swiss project by artistic director Walter Knapp which inspired the subsequent worldwide exhibition "CowParade" and similar exhibitions in other cities, including Wow! Gorillas which took place in Bristol in 2011. To date Gromit Unleashed has raised over £5 million for Bristol Children's Hospital.
Gromit Unleashed 2 was a public arts trail in Bristol, England. The trail featured 67 giant sculptures designed by high-profile artists, designers, innovators and local talent. Sculptures are positioned in high footfall and iconic locations around Bristol and the surrounding area from 2 July to 2 September 2018. A sequel to Gromit Unleashed in 2013, the trail featured statues of Wallace on a life-size bench, Gromit, and Feathers McGraw. On the 23rd of August 2023 a fourth trail was announced, the trail in Bristol will run in 2025.
Aardman Animations is an animation studio in Bristol, England that produces stop motion and computer-animated features, shorts, TV series and adverts.
Unicornfest was a public arts trail in Bristol, England to celebrate the 650th anniversary of Bristol. The trail featured 60 giant unicorn sculptures designed by artists, designers and local talent. The unicorns were placed in various locations around Bristol, but some were further afield in Weston-super-Mare, Cheddar Gorge and Chew Valley Lake. Over 40 artists had created 60 unicorns between them.