Photos: The Big Hoot project

[meridian_rose]

The Big Hoot - 20 July – 27 September 2015
A few photosI took of some of the owls featured in The Big Hoot project.

From the official website:
The Big Hoot captured the imagination of everyone in Birmingham and beyond this summer, with hundreds of thousands of people taking to the streets with their Big Hoot Trail maps to explore the colourful invasion of individually designed owls. Taking in the city’s 10 districts, tourists and residents alike enjoyed their owl adventure, discovering and celebrating the extraordinary creativity produced by many of Birmingham’s artistic community and over 25,000 young people.
The Big Hoot owls went under the hammer on 15 October 2015 at The Big Hoot auction sponsored by Vodafone and we are thrilled to have smashed our target by raising the incredible sum of £508,035!
The money raised from the auction will support Birmingham Children’s Hospital Charity’s £3.65m Star Appeal. This appeal will enable us to create a first of its kind, a Rare Diseases Centre in the UK specifically for children. It will provide co-ordinated care, treatment, support and most importantly hope to children and families living with a rare or undiagnosed condition.
In addition the auction raised £15,000 for G’owl’d by Temper with proceeds going to Edward’s Trust, and £7,800 for Fleet and Free with proceeds going to Birchfield Harriers.

Comments

[silk_dragon_zen]

These are lovely, and what a marvelous project! Rare diseases are so important — *has a rare disease called Hermansky-Pudlak syndrome*. They say that one out of every ten people has a rare disease. So in a way, rare diseases as a whole, aren't so rare. It's that while each disease is rare in itself, there are many, many of them. And that affects the lives of 10% of the population.

[meridian_rose]

I'm glad you liked the photos! It is a very worthy project and got communities involved which was lovely. I never thought of the rare disease issue that way, but that's a good point, rare individually, but making an impact on a significant part of the population overall, whereas the more common diseases get more attention and funding.

[meridian_rose]

Also I have just read an overview of HPS which sounds terrifying and difficult to live with. Despite your health problems and understandable depressive periods, you come across as overall positive in outlook and supportive to others. *hugs*

[silk_dragon_zen]

I think that I'm probably more resistant to depression than my history of depression might imply. I mean, it takes a tonne to make me have depression, but as I get older, it seems to get easier since I take after my father in this respect: with age comes perspective and an ability to make wiser choices about where to put time and energy. So at this point, despite the recent relapse in depression, I've been through enough episodes to have learnt that I usually rebound well once I'm able to start addressing the things that are possible contributors to an episode.