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Artists Wanted to help bring “Oor Wullie’s Bucket Trail” to Dundee

By John Freeman on December 26, 2015

A major art project inspired by the Sunday Post‘s “Oor Wullie” will take over Dundee next summer – and the project is still looking for artists to be involved.

Oor Wullie’s Bucket Trail is a major public arts event that will see the streets of Dundee and beyond come to life with a spectacle of colour of 50 giant Oor Wullie sculptures in summer 2016.

The project, a collaboration between the ARCHIE Foundation, DC Thomson and Wild in Art aims capture the hearts and minds of the public and encourage Dundee residents to become “tourists in their own City” and attract visitors from all over.

Dundee is of course home to Dandy and Beano inspired sculptures, befitting the comics’ birthplace.

The “Oor Wullie” sculptures will be beautifully decorated by local and national artists as well as household names from the worlds of film, music, art, animation and fashion.

The project’s organisers say they are still looking for imaginative sculpture designs that can capture Wullie’s cheeky character and/or the rich Scottish heritage he represents.

From small local companies to national corporations, a whole host of businesses – which already include Dundee’s Apex City Hotel & Spa – and individuals will also have the unique opportunity to sponsor a sculpture that will then be on show for ten weeks before taking the sculptures to auction to help raise funds for the ARCHIE Foundation’s Tayside Appeal to create a twin theatre suite for the children’s hospital.

Already on board is artist John Lowrie Morrison.

“The Archie Foundation is a great charity,” he says, “and I’m delighted to be involved in this initiative to raise money for the new children’s operating suite at Tayside’s Children Hospital. The idea of painting a statue of Oor Wullie as part of the “Trail” has got me really excited. I can’t wait to see how it turns out!”

• Check out this video of Oor Wullie artist Pete Davidson drawing the wee lad and writer Morris Heggie visiting the remnants of DC Thomson’s East Kingsway printworks (seemingly in the style of the 1970s TV version of The Incredible Hulk’s Dr Bruce Banner, complete with plaintive music).

• For more information, please visit www.oorwulliebuckettrail.com | Find the Oor Wullie trail on Facebook | Find the Oor Wullie trail on Twitter @OWbuckettrail | Instagram

• To find out more about designing one of the sculptures visit www.oorwulliebuckettrail.com/artists where you can find a link to the Artists Pack

Thanks to Jeremy Briggs for spotting the news about this project

About the Author
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John Freeman

John is the founder of downthetubes, launched in 1998. He is a comics and magazine editor, writer, and Press Officer for the Lakes International Comic Art Festival. He also runs Crucible Comic Press.

Working in British comics publishing since the 1980s, his credits include editor of titles such as Doctor Who Magazine and Overkill for Marvel UK, Babylon 5 Magazine, Star Trek Magazine, and its successor, Star Trek Explorer, and more. He also edited the comics anthology STRIP Magazine and edited several audio comics for ROK Comics; and has edited several comic collections and graphic novels, including volumes of “Charley’s War” and “Dan Dare”, and Hancock: The Lad Himself, by Stephen Walsh and Keith Page.

He’s the writer of comics such as Pilgrim: Secrets and Lies for B7 Comics; “Crucible”, a creator-owned project with 2000AD artist Smuzz; and “Death Duty” and “Skow Dogs”, with Dave Hailwood.