Outdoor advertising company aims to save Nelson's ship in a bottle
Howard Lake | 20 March 2012 | News
Boutique outdoor media company Ocean Outdoor is supporting the Art Fund’s campaign to help save a sculpture of Admiral Lord Nelson’s Ship in a Bottle, displayed in London’s Trafalgar Square, for the nation.
Ocean Outdoor’s managing director Tim Bleakley has pledged £362,500 worth of outdoor advertising to help secure a permanent new berth for the sculpture by artist Yinka Shonibare, MBE, at the National Maritime Museum in the new Royal Borough of Greenwich.
The campaign aims to raise £362,500 in donations by mid-April or the artwork, inspired by Nelson’s flagship HMS Victory and which has been exhibited on the Fourth Plinth in Trafalgar Square since May 2009, might be bought by an overseas private collector and disappear from public view. So far the public campaign has raised over £150,000.
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The advertising campaign appears this week across sites including the Two Towers East in Canary Wharf, Eat Street at Westfield London and Hammersmith Broadway.
The campaign posters invite supporters and the public to text SHIP to 70555 to donate £5 towards the campaign.
Ocean Outdoor CEO Tim Bleakley said: “Shonibare’s scale model of Nelson’s Victory has proved one of the most popular of the fourth plinth commissions, but its future is in doubt. It really is all hands on deck to help save this contemporary tribute to a great British icon in what is a very British year.”
He is aware that the putative headline, should the campaign succeed, of “Ocean saves ship” would be very apt.
“As a business that has built its reputation on The Art of Outdoor,” he added, “we are matching each £1 needed to save the ship with £1 in media. Hopefully in the year of the Queen’s Jubilee and the London 2012 Olympics people will get involved and match each £1 for £1.”
The Art Fund gave a £50,000 grant to begin the campaign to secure the sculpture permanently. Carolyn Young, Director of Membership and Marketing at the Art Fund, commented:
“Ocean Outdoor’s involvement in the campaign couldn’t be more timely, we are thrilled with their generous offer to help keep this world-class work of contemporary art on public display. Ocean’s state-of-the-art media provides the work with amazing visibility and the creative opportunities their digital sites offer will make a big difference in raising the £365,200 needed.”
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About Howard Lake
Howard Lake is consultant editor of UK Fundraising. He founded the site in 1994 and successfully sold it in 2022. As director of Giving X Ltd he is exploring growing giving on a massive scale.
He is the founder of Fundraising Camp and co-founder of GoodJobs.