July 2013: A Pangolin Conservation and the Arts Collaboration

Pangolin walking, by Sinna One

Baby Pangie rides on Mama’s back, by Sinna One

Pangolins have now been seen around the streets of Brighton!  No, not a 9^th UK species, but Paul Rankin and colleague Debbie Shaw, an expert on Chinese traditional medicine, both from Pangolin Research Mundulea have teamed up with One Network for Conservation and the Arts to set up a ‘Pangolin Trail’ as a part of ONCA's 2013 Summer ‘Making Tracks’ theme.

Artists creating the pangolin trail

Porcupine by Elizabeth Jardine

A squadron of brilliant illustrators from Art Schism led by Sinna One, aka Daryl Bennett, have created a wild, colourful Pangolin Trail of paintings on telephone exchange boxes on the English streets around ONCA’s art gallery in Brighton for people to find. See http://onca.org.uk/cape-farewell/the-pangolin-trail/  for the webpages and more examples of the paintings.

Pangolin mother carrying baby by Paul Rankin

Each painting is linked via a mobile phone QR code to a different webpage carrying photos and information for the general public to discover more about pangolins, their conservation and the challenges of tracking these wonderful animals in the Namibian bush. Paul’s stone sculpture of a pangolin mother carrying a baby is also on show in the exhibition.

The unusual background for this exhibition illustrating some of pangolins’ fascinating characteristics, the challenges of this type of research and the other animals encountered at night in the Africa make perfect subjects for artists to depict!

We hope that this will not just be informative and help awareness of the pangolins’ plight, but also be fun and spark ideas for similar projects elsewhere, especially in the demand countries for pangolin products in Asia.