The Guernsey Donkey Parade

One of the many and random parts of my job as Marketing & Advertising Manager was deciding to sponsor a donkey in the Guernsey Donkey Parade which raises money for the Guernsey Adult Literacy Project (GALP).  We choice the local Beechwood school year 5 and 6 along with the Art Teacher to design our donkey. 

Karen, the Art Teacher wrote:

"We decided to paint our donkey with an Aboriginal design. Aboriginal art tells stories of journeys and the travels that were made, mapping water holes, animals, etc. Donkeys traditionally are a means of transport (Mary and Joseph’s journey to Bethlehem) and so we thought this was an apt link.

At the time that I was asked to decorate the donkey I was just about to go to Australia to visit my brother and his family in Sydney. I trawled the Art Galleries while I was there and found a contemporary Aboriginal painting, featuring concentric circles, which I felt we could base our design on.

At school, in the Art lessons, one of the areas we cover is ‘form.’ So to account for the differing ‘form’ of the donkey, the size of the circles vary according to the form of the body parts.  On Sparky, you will see five colours only, mimicking the  colours used in Aboriginal Artwork.  Black and green are two of the colours, making the link with M&S, our sponsor."

With that, meet Sparky, our donkey (named after what the locals refer to M&S as, Marks & "Sparks")

The start of Sparky

Year 6 hard at work

His Tail

His Mane

Sparky and the other 40 donkeys will be displayed for a week along the sea front of St. Peter Port, then they will "go on parade" around the island.  Our donkey will be displayed at our St. Martins location.  Mid September, the donkeys will then be auctioned off with all the proceeds going to GALP.