I Love West Leeds Festival 2010: Prepartions underway - Leeds Festival Tickets

Organisers of this year's I Love West Leeds festival have picked the mammoth river-dwelling creatures as their mascot for this year's event. And they are hoping to be swamped with volunteers to get hippo-happy and help create hundreds of plaster models of the animals. The models will then be distributed to schoolchildren across west Leeds to be painted and decorated. And they will also form part of a fun Armley Hippo Trail to be featured at the festival. 

I Love West Leeds organiser Jane Earnshaw – whose previous themes for the annual event have included a completely knitted woollen wonderland and decorated underpants – explained the reason behind this year's choice of mascot. "A prehistoric hippo was discovered in a quarry in Armley in 1851.
"We have called (the mascot) Denny after Henry Denny, the curator who identified the hippo bones in 1851."
To create 'Denny', a special rubber hippo mould was made for the festival by Chris Gauntley, a student at Leeds College of Art and Design.  Ms Earnshaw now has 10 rubber hippo moulds at the ready and is on the lookout for a team of volunteers to help create hundreds of little Dennys.

"We need an army of helpers to come and mix plaster and fill them over and over again until we have hundreds of hippos," she explained. "You don't need any skills at all except the ability to put plaster into water from a scoop and then mix it with your hands (rubber gloves provided) until it's like cream, then pour your lovely mix into the waiting moulds.

"Put the moulds on the drying racks and then you can go home. It's very funny when we take them out of the moulds – its a bit like being James Herriot!"

Ms Earnshaw wants volunteers to sign up to help for around two hours each.

Three sessions will be running daily for the next four weeks at 9am, 11.30am and 2pm Monday to Saturday.

On Sundays, the sessions will be running at 1pm and 3pm. Volunteers are asked to bring a change of clothes.