The London Design Festival has launched a Kickstarter campaign to turn Trafalgar Square into a crazy golf course for a week, with holes designed by leading names like Paul Smith, the late Zaha Hadid and other creative visionaries.
It will be free for the public to play. Designer Paul Smith, curator and ambassador for the project, wants a ‘public takeover of Trafalgar Square, transforming it into a free, colourful and playful arena of Visionary Crazy Golf.’ Those last three words are the name of the project. Mr Smith has made certain to secure permission to use the square from the Mayor’s office, so it won’t be quite as anarchic as that quote sounds – but it does sound like huge fun. The project’s funding goal is £120,000 to set up, install and run the installation for a week, which will be during the London Design Festival from the 17th to the 25th of September 2016. If that target is not reached then it will not go ahead. At the time of writing this, the Kickstarter campaign had raised £1,470 in pledges, but there are 42 days to go till the June Kickstarter deadline. Fun Kickstarter projects have a habit of wildly exceeding their funding goals, so let’s hope it does happen.
Tim Hunkin is involved as well (anyone remember his crazily informative drawings in The Observer?). He has come up with a typically Heath Robinson-style contraption, a tall tower through which the ball rolls and, if it manages to avoid the numerous hazards, triggers a machine that pours you a glass of whisky. If Visionary Crazy Golf happens, it will be the biggest thing the London Design Festival have ever done, and it will be a great publicity boost for the wonderful sport of crazy golf.
Here’s a link to the Kickstarter project: https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/londondesignfestival/visionary-crazy-golf-in-trafalgar-square
