Hippo Research - Cow Parade

The World's Largest Public Art Event

CowParade is the largest and most successful public art event in the world. CowParade events have been staged in over 50 cities worldwide since 1999 including Chicago (1999), New York City (2000), London (2002), Tokyo (2003), and Brussels (2003). Dublin (2003), Prague (2004), and Stockholm (2004), Mexico City (2005), Sao Paulo (2005), Buenos Aires (2006), Boston (2006) Paris (2006), Milan (2007, and Istanbul (2007).

• It is estimated that over 100 million people around the world have seen one our famous cows.
• Over $20 million have been raised through worldwide charitable organizations through the auction of the cows, which take place at the conclusion of each event.
• Over 5,000 artists worldwide have participated in CowParade – professional and amateur, famous and emerging, young and old.

Why Cows?

This is a popular question. Simply, the cow is a universally beloved animal. The cow represents different things to different people around the world-she's sacred, she's historical, she connects us to our past-but the common feeling is one of affection. There is something magical about the cow that transcends throughout the world. She simply makes everyone smile.

As an art canvas, there is no other animal or object that provides the form, flexibility, and contiguous breadth of a cow. The three shapes (standing, grazing, reclining) provide artists with subtle, yet interesting angles and curves to create unique works of art. The basic cow form is also benign so that it can be altered, transformed, and morphed into completely other animals, people or objects. Incredibly, over 2500 hundred Cows have been created worldwide, but no two are alike.

Who Are The Artists?

The cows are painted by local artists from the amateur and unknown to the professional and famous. The artists are notified of the event through an "Open Call to Artists" process. This process consists of a targeted mailing to top artists, newspapers and television ads, and through cooperation with local arts organizations. The event maintains a portfolio of the design submissions from which event sponsors select.

Taken from the Cow Parade website.

Essentially this Hippo Trail is simplified, scaled down version of the Cow Parade. In this case that artists are primarily school children and the location is condensed into a single street in Armley.

Because it's aimed at children obviously the designs will be a lot less complex, mostly just painted, but there's nothing stopping people adding to the model itself!

I'm inevitably going to have quite a few hippos left over for my own use so I may be tempted to jazz some of them up myself.