Bristol Bears reveal club sculpture at Wild Place Project

Members of the squad took a break from training to visit the wildlife attraction and help put a six-foot high bear sculpture, painted in their club colours, into position.

The Bristol Bear has been painted in the side’s home shirt colours by illustrator, Jessica Perrin, who travelled from her studio in Birmingham to paint him in the eye-catching strip.

The Bristol Bear is one of 20 bear sculptures that make up a new Big Bear Sculpture Trail at Wild Place Project. It officially opens on Saturday, April 6th and includes bears painted in a variety of guises by artists from Bristol and around the UK.

Justin Morris, chief executive of Bristol Zoological Society, which owns and runs Wild Place Project, said: “We were thrilled to welcome the Bristol Bears here today and it’s marvellous that the Bristol Bears’ sculpture is the final one to be put in place.

“It completes this wonderful trail that will thrill all of our visitors over the coming months. We hope that everyone who follows the Bristol Bears will come to see their bear sculpture and have their picture taken alongside it.”

The Big Bear Sculpture Trail comes ahead of the opening of a new exhibit called Bear Wood at Wild Place Project this July. It will see European brown bears, lynx, wolves and wolverine returned to UK woodland for the first time in hundreds of years as part of a new exhibit covering seven and a half acres.

Visitors to Bear Wood will be able to walk through the exhibit on a raised walkway that will wind its way through the trees. New, 180-degree, floor-to-ceiling glass viewing areas and ‘dens’ will give visitors an up-close view of the animals living alongside each other in British woodland as they would have done in years gone by.

The Big Bear Sculpture Trail has been organised and managed by Bristol Zoological Society – the charity that owns and runs Wild Place Project – alongside Wild in Art – an organisation that produces popular art events which entertain, inform, enrich and leave a lasting legacy.

The Big Bear Sculpture Trail will be at Wild Place Project from April 6 until September 1. For more details, click here.