Kentish Gazette Canterbury & District
Look out – here comes
‘I woke up with this message on my phone saying ‘have you seen the elephants walking around Chilham’ which made me jump out of bed’ Exclusive
An artist has been revealed as the brains behind the appearance of hundreds of mystery elephants in Chilham on Friday.
More than 1,000 elephant models were placed on walls and benches, in front of people’s homes, in a pub garden, on top of people’s cars and at the school gates.
Residents had no idea why or how they appeared but we can exclusively reveal why.
Jill Holder from Faversham planned the idea for more than four months and wanted to bring the community together by “dropping some magic into people’s lives”.
The international-selling artist heard from a friend the village had lost its community spirit.
She said; “Many people have no idea how important art is. It’s everywhere.
“I wanted the village to wake up to something magical.
“Small villages no longer have shared memories and I wanted everyone to share the elephants and to bring people together.”
Ms Holder worked with a team of nine people from 3am on Friday and placed the elephants in designated spots around the village.
She researched the area and marked places on a map where they couldn’t leave the ornaments. It was meticulously planned.
The 65-year-old said: “We met at 3am at the fire station and everyone put their elefest badges on – these were to let everyone know we were part of a team and not doing anything sinister, just in case somebody called the police.
“Then they went off and each person put out more than 100 elephants – it took us nearly three hours.
“It’s a tiny spark and a really big idea.”
The mother-of-one has collected ornamental elephants since she was 16.
“I’m fascinated with them as each one is so different. I got my first one when I was 16 and I’m now 65!
“I got quite a lot of them from a boot fair and it took a week to get them ready and cleaned up for the event.
“They all had to be wrapped in something that wouldn’t be noisy when we were placing them around the village.”