Hanny’s Voorwerp | Official website of discoverer Hanny van Arkel

Amsterdam, Antwerp, London. And this year: Copenhagen, Milan and Singapore. And Heerlen. The Elephant Parade’s in Heerlen! Raising awareness (and money) for the Asian elephants in need of our help, in such a beautiful way. I’ve been a fan ever since I more or less accidentally bumped into the colourful collection of art elephants in London last year.

And I’ve been looking forward to the Parade taking over ‘my’ city for weeks. After the opening last month, my uncle and I would ‘hunt’ for the elephants, the first weekend they arrived. To shoot pictures that is. We’d agreed to do so ever since we first discovered them and found out they’d parade all over the world. Now every time I’m in the little city, I smile when I’m reminded of how cool this project is. It all started with Dutch father and son Marc and Mike Spits, who met baby elephant Mocha on their holiday in Thailand. Mocha had lost her leg stepping on a landmine and she inspired Marc to do something structural to help. Something extraordinary. And with huge success.

We weren’t the only ones in the centre of Heerlen that Sunday, while all the shops were closed. There were fans from different corners of the Netherlands visiting just to see the elephants. We frequently saw people looking around and had a couple of conversations starting like: ‘Are you looking for elephant Waterfall, ‘cause she’s sitting right at the end of this street…’ There also was a couple, of whom the lady said to us: ‘Did you hear there were two people who actually climbed over the fence of a government building to see elephants?’ Yeah, that was us. We knew there were surveillance cameras and we only wanted to picture the elephants without the silly fence in it (and since it was such a pathetic little fence…)

Us rebels still didn’t manage to get all of them that day though. Some elephants are located in shopping windows, the theatre and inside of another government building. But I went back to do the same trip with my dad and managed to see all (approximately) 40 in the end. Besides the ones named and numbered, there are also a few ‘unofficial’ ones, without a nametag. There are a couple of elephants painted by kids from primary schools in Heerlen. And there were a couple of famous Dutch people involved in creating some of the elephants. There’s one sitting in the middle of a roundabout. And the one from Van der Valk looks over castle Terworm.

A special mention should also go to Brigitta Santegoeds’ Elephant Tree, who shows the strength of the elephant in a tree. The tree has painted shoes on its branches, which – according to the artist – where thrown in there to make wishes. (Her wish was to help the elephants). The elephant is placed in front of the city hall, under a tree. And the other day I noticed life sometimes does imitate art, as someone had put a pair of real shoes over a branch of the tree!

I can go on with more anecdotes, but you only have until the 25th of May to enjoy them in Heerlen yourself. Buying the art books or limited replicas (or both) can still be done in the web shop after that though. I bought mine in the little art shop in the city, where I heard The Parade’s in Copenhagen this summer… I always wanted to go and see Copenhagen… But for now, here’s a small collection of masterpieces of the Heerlen Parade.