Bus sculpture trail

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Looks like TfL have jumped on the bandwagon of having decorated sculptures on trails round Central London. We had the Olympic Mascots and there are now decorative book themed benches on display. Bristol had the incredibly popular Gromit Unlimited trails last year which was extraordinarily popular and still is given the demand for models of the Gromits. It's raised £4.5m for Bristol Children's Hospital. Gromit has now spread to Hong Kong with 70 new Gromits about to go on display there. There are rumours that next year Bristol will do a repeat but with Shaun the Sheep as the theme.

TfL will have 60 themed New Bus for London sculptures on display from September.

TfL Press Release

I confess to having done the Olympic Sculpture trails and they were an interesting way of seeing bits of the City I'd never walked round.

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Based on some tweets this morning it looks like the long promised bus sculpture trail is being launched to the press this morning.

This is based on NB4Ls models on plinths with different artistic finishes. They will be put on trails around London - similar to the Olympic Mascots, the recent "book benches" plus elephants etc in the past.

I dare say there will be a press release and web page appearing later today. A previous press release said the trail starts on 20 October for 7 weeks.

Link to Wild in Art website

Looks like there are three trails near the Thames, in Westminster and in the Olympic Park.

Ian Visits was at the launch. He says there will be 4 trails in total with the last one appearing in Croydon before Christmas.

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Photos from the Olympic Park Trail

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The Croydon Trail has been launched today.

www.tfl.gov.uk/campaign/around-croydon

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Having stomped round Croydon today and bits of Central London on Friday I have now "done" all the Sculpture Trails.

With apologies to anyone from Croydon but what a mixed up mess of a central area it has. I hadn't quite appreciated how derelict some bits are and how much nasty car orientated 1960s design still exists. Still I saw bits of the town centre I've not seen before and surprisingly, given the cold weather, there were several people wandering around doing the trail at the same time as me.

[Steve80]

Jan 4, 2015 18:15:18 GMT snoggle said:

Having stomped round Croydon today and bits of Central London on Friday I have now "done" all the Sculpture Trails.

With apologies to anyone from Croydon but what a mixed up mess of a central area it has. I hadn't quite appreciated how derelict some bits are and how much nasty car orientated 1960s design still exists. Still I saw bits of the town centre I've not seen before and surprisingly, given the cold weather, there were several people wandering around doing the trail at the same time as me.

I only just come across this thread. I have seen one of those bus sculptures but I can't remember where (Maybe in Reeves Corner). Was wondering why it was there.

Croydon is a strange one. West Croydon is a shanty town where East Croydon is more luxurious. Thankfully, I live in the East I assume your comment about the 1960 is directed at the Croydon Underpass and the Flyover. I know Croydon is having constant construction works everywhere and I muts admit that if they ever were to replace the underpass then I certainly wouldn't cry about it. Also, I'm not impressed about how difficult it is to get from one side of the road to the other when trying to cross Wellesley Road, between George Street and Station Road in West Croydon. I think there are only three places to cross and one is going the pedestrian underpass via the Whitgift Centre. Its very common to see people trying to cross this busy road to get to and from Poplar Walk and Bedford Park even though there's no pedestrian crossing there and fast moving traffic makes it dangerous to cross there. I think the Westfield development is about to change all of this hopefully

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Jan 5, 2015 5:24:31 GMT Steve80 said:

I only just come across this thread. I have seen one of those bus sculptures but I can't remember where (Maybe in Reeves Corner). Was wondering why it was there.

Croydon is a strange one. West Croydon is a shanty town where East Croydon is more luxurious. Thankfully, I live in the East I assume your comment about the 1960 is directed at the Croydon Underpass and the Flyover. I know Croydon is having constant construction works everywhere and I muts admit that if they ever were to replace the underpass then I certainly wouldn't cry about it. Also, I'm not impressed about how difficult it is to get from one side of the road to the other when trying to cross Wellesley Road, between George Street and Station Road in West Croydon. I think there are only three places to cross and one is going the pedestrian underpass via the Whitgift Centre. Its very common to see people trying to cross this busy road to get to and from Poplar Walk and Bedford Park even though there's no pedestrian crossing there and fast moving traffic makes it dangerous to cross there. I think the Westfield development is about to change all of this hopefully

I was certainly a bit annoyed about the ludicrous crossing arrangements on Wellesley Road. I hate having to use dingy horrible subways and looking at the accumulated dust and muck on the stairs the Council haven't swept them in months.

The whole architecture of the place is very jumbled and it's clear that parts of the centre are well past their sell by date - plenty of empty buildings way past their best. I don't expect it to be mega glitzy and shiny - those places are just artificial and souless. Croydon just felt rather down at heel and unco-ordinated. I was also genuinely surprised to find churches tucked down side streets - I had no idea they existed.

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I see that we are nearly at the date for the auction of the Bus Sculptures. Looking at the auction website shows that only a minority of the sculptures have an advance bid in place and an even smaller number more than one bid. I wonder what happens if TfL don't manage to get any bids for some of the sculptures?

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The grand total of all the auction sales tonight was £95,000 with prices varying from £950 to £3500.