Absolutely delighted to be the art co-ordinator and one of the artists for Maggie’s Penguin Parade in Dundee. We are fundraising for Maggie’s Dundee by releasing 80 giant painted penguins onto the streets of Dundee and beyond. There are 97 baby penguins on the loose too!

By the end of September we hope to have raised £540,000 for the charity, to keep the Dundee Centre open for another year.

Maggie’s provides free practical, emotional and social support to people with cancer and their family and friends.The Centres are places to find practical advice about benefits and eating well; places where qualified experts provide emotional support; places to meet other people; places where you can simply sit quietly with a cup of tea.

Here’s a brilliant article in The Courier by Gayle Ritchie which further highlights why this is such an incredible charity to be fundraising for.

Please meet my penguins…

Maggie and Fleur are sponsored by Abertay University and can be found outside their library during the parade, until 7th September. Then they will rejoin the rest of the waddle at Slessor Gardens for the goodbye event.

As many will know by now there is a few extra fun things about Maggie and Fleur. The first being that they have their own augmented reality app!

How cool is that! Big thanks to Weave Abertay for commissioning Rishikesh and Naman to create it. You can read more about it on the Abertay University website.

Please do give it a go when you visit! Aren’t Abertay just awesome! So creative and so supportive.

But hey, that’s not all! There’s more to Wee Maggie than initially meets the eye….

She springs to life every now and again to go off exploring and meeting people. She is our parade adventure penguin!

Wee Maggie is not on the app or map so doesn’t have a code, it would be too confusing as she is in different locations all the time! 🤪🐧

Wee Maggie is one of our baby penguins but unlike her wee friends she will be joining her big penguin family, including Fleur and Charles, for the goodbye event and then auction in September, she will be raising money with them for Maggie’s Dundee (I wish I had enough pennies to buy her so she could stay with me! #socute)

Wee Maggie’s sponsor is Signature Signs.

Courier Article: Live painting at Abertay University as part of Dundee Design Month.

Next up is my very dapper Charles, sponsored by Delson. He is the tallest and quite possibly the grandest of all the penguins on parade. Throughout the summer he can be found next to the Peter Pan sculpture in Kirriemuir.

Charles is inspired by a sketch by Maggie’s co-founder Charles Jencks and named after him too. His outfit is based on the top and tails of the 30s as worn by Fred Astaire (below) and many others in that era. The blog The Reenactor was great in helping me to get the details right. (Photo credit: The Reenactor).

His top hat was a huge challenge for me as I’ve never used fibre glass before. I have to give Chris ‘Creo’ Alexander a big thank you for all of his help and advice with the construction, and a thanks too to Dundee and Angus College for letting me use their workshops during this extremely messy process.

As if building one giant penguin hat wasn’t enough, I took on the challenge of the Baltic Builder’s hat too. The hat was constructed in my studio, not really making me the most popular with my new neighbours as the resin fumes from the fibre glass really were pretty strong! Ha ha! Here are some making it pics…

After hat construction and attachment, the builder was sent down the the fantastic Rae McCulloch for painting and bringing to life. When I asked her if she’d like to paint Baltic I was delighted she said yes after seeing some of her previous creations on the Big Stampede, that we both worked on together (do you remember my elephant?).

It’s time to visit Maggie, Fleur and Charles. There are lots of little hidden details that I’ve included in their designs, can you spot them all?

This is Charles up in Kirriemuir: Visiting Charles

Wee Maggie and her mum Fleur at Abertay University: Visiting Maggie and Fleur

I will be sharing photos and videos of the making of Maggie, Fleur and Charles in my next post, as well as some behind the scenes of the Maggie’s Penguin Parade action. I thought that might be of interest to some of you. Watch this space….

There has been lots of incredible coverage in the media of the Maggie’s Penguin Parade so far, please find just some of them below. They include interviews with myself and the rest of Team Penguin too.

Courier: Parade Trail Map is Launched

BBC News: Penguins in Position

BBC News: Here comes the penguin Parade

Courier: Today’s the day! Who will be first to complete the Maggie’s Penguin Parade trail?

Wee Maggie now has her own enamel pin, which is helping raise money for Maggie’s Dundee too. There are 5 others in the penguin pin collection, each representing one of my penguins. They are available from Maggie’s Dundee and also from my Etsy shop.

I am just loving seeing all your penguin pics! Keep sending them in and tagging me in them so I don’t miss them!

@whimsicallush #whimsicallush #MaggiesPenguinParade #MaggiesPenguins

Here are just a few of my favs so far…

Annie Long, our brilliant project director with Charles

When Wee Maggie and I got to meet the Beano gang!

Wee Maggie finds herself a penguin flying machine! Chitty Chitty Bang Bang

Penguin family

Been waiting to get a photo of both Charles and I in our top hats! Shame we couldn’t find one for AJ too.

Penguin art team (Joanne MacFadyen and I) with the Education co-ordinator (baby penguin wrangler), Neil Cooney. (Photo: Steve MacDougall: D.C. Thomson)

Install day: Here’s most of the team!