Unveiled at Slimbridge, WWT’s first giant LEGO® brick animal trail
On Tuesday the Wildfowl and Wetlands Trust’s first LEGO brick animal trail was launched at Slimbridge Wetland Centre by WWT Chief Executive Martin Spray. This is the first time these amazing characters have been seen among the real life animals which inspired them.
Through this trail, the attraction in Gloucestershire is using the world’s most popular toy to encourage kids (and big kids) to build a better future for nature.
Visitors can enjoy the 10 individually-designed LEGO brick characters revealed today at WWT Slimbridge, for eight weeks over the summer from 18 July - 6 September.
The giant animals, some up to twelve times life size, include Flavia the Andean flamingo, a riot of pink bricks; Emily the Emperor dragonfly, resplendently perched on a LEGO brick reed, and Benedict the Bewick’s swan, magnificently stretching his brick wings. Another model, Lottie the otter, was named through a social media competition, to celebrate the birth of Princess Charlotte.
Two of the animals, the crane and flamingo, were built by Bristol based LEGO brick ‘birdman’ Tom Poulsom. The team at Bright Bricks, the UK’s only certified LEGO professionals, created the remaining eight. In total, 91,700 LEGO bricks were used over 955 hours to make all 10 characters. Lottie the otter and Bruce the Red Breasted goose took the longest time to make at 120 hours each.
Mark Roberts, Slimbridge’s Aviculture Manager said:
“We’re thrilled to welcome the new species that have landed at WWT Slimbridge today. We know our visitors old and new are going to absolutely love them. They’re a really fun way to highlight some of the animals WWT helps to protect, such as the iconic Bewick’s swan and our six species of flamingo.
Here at Slimbridge, our founder Sir Peter Scott, discovered that each individual Bewick’s swan could be identified by its bill pattern. This led to one of the world’s longest running projects to protect this species. Today, we are using LEGO bricks to inspire the next generation to continue Sir Peter’s work of saving threatened wildlife.”
As well as the trail, budding sculptors will be able to build to their hearts’ content at a specially designed LEGO brick play area with more than 40,000 bricks, get creative at exclusive workshops in August and build their own mini figures to take home.
To find out more about the Giant LEGO brick animals and other brick activities please visit wwt.org.uk/legobrickanimals or follow #LEGOBrickAnimals.
The LEGO brick animal trail is part of Nature Explorers, WWT Slimbridge’s summer long event, where little explorers are issued with their official Nature Explorer passport and set off on a voyage of discovery to complete challenges and collect passport stickers.
