Bug invasion hits Intu shopping centres
The Academy, Jubba Ltd & Intu
Getting to grips with creepy-crawlies, from Essex to Renfrewshire
The world needs bugs. And bugs need us. But, we’re losing touch with nature and amazingly, so research says, 17% of kids in the UK haven’t walked in a forest for a year or more. 21% can’t pick a bee out of a lineup. And 10% don't even know where honey comes from.
Send in the bugs
Intu wanted to do something about it. They bumped heads with PR agency, The Academy and events producers, Jubba, and then bugged us to build 12 massive insects for a year-long, UK-wide bug hunt. 6-foot buzzin’, wriggling,’ scuttlin’ thingies – TBH, it didn’t take much persuasion.
Gimme the stats
- Supersized, life-like bugs x12
- Plunge makers and imaginators x28
- Bug-obsessed hours 4,570
- Shopping centres toured x13
- Net Promoter Score +21 points
- Footfall +5%
- Family spend +25%
- CIM Award wins Best Use of PR
Catching the bug
Kids went mad for our giant bugs. First they’d track them down, then they’d clamber over, talk to, and learn all about these amazing critters, via some nifty interactive tech.
Chris Packham launched the tour and was suitably dazzled, but thankfully not lost for words:
They are sculptural. They are artistic. They are very alluring when you come in to the centre at Lakeside because of their scale. I mean they are huge. But, they are also anatomically accurate and behaving properly. So the model makers have gone to extraordinary lengths to make sure that these are museum quality models, only on a vast scale. And I think they are incredibly impressive…
How we turned mini beasts into massive monsters
Research, research, research. Detail, detail, detail. Every bug was crafted with TLC. We wanted to amaze, but we also needed to educate. They had to be so accurate it felt like you’d stepped into a scene from ‘Honey, I Shrunk The Kids’.
We got obsessive about the minutiae, and ingenious about supersizing them. Clay, fiberglass, bath mats, resin; molding, sculpting, welding, airbrushing, head scratching… Each bug took weeks from building skeletons to adding hairs.
It took a team of 28 sculptors, painters and tinkerers over four and a half thousand hours of entomological obsessing, over every mandible, antennae and sensilla. And what we don’t now know about nut weevils isn’t worth knowing (unless you’re a nut weevil, of course).
Design & Fabrication Team
Arna, Charlie M., Charlie H., Dan, David B, Diane, Dom, Emma H, Emma SK, Emma N, Fran, Harriet, Jack, Jeff, Jodie, Joe, Keith, Lou, Matt, Mel, Nathan, Rich W, Robyn, Shelley, Steve, Tim EL, Tim S, Tina
Main Suppliers
Anvil Tubesmiths, Autopaints, Bay Plastics, Chandlers, East Coast Fibreglass, Essentra Components, Peter Evans Studios, Sensory Plus, W.P. Notcutt Ltd
More magic this way
There’s plenty more eye-popping, jaw-dropping, mind-blowing, supersized, spectacular creations here:
