Sand Drawing to raise awareness of cancer crisis for Macmillan Cancer Support

Footprints in the sand washed away by the sea. We often use this metaphor to illustrate the beauty and transience of our sand art, and how low impact and environmentally friendly sand drawings are. One minute they are there, the next they have been washed away and it’s as though the beach art never existed. However, this impermanance can also have a different symbolism.

Currently up to 50,000 people in the UK are thought to have undiagnosed cancer and their diagnosis and treatment is being delayed because of the problems caused by the Covid 19 pandemic. This number is likely to double by next year. As we know, the earlier cancer can be caught and treatment can begin, the greater the chances of recovery for the person concerned.

Macmillan Cancer Support contacted us to create a series of sand drawings to illustrate this shocking fact, they imagined a long line of footprints queueing along the beach, like the queues we have got used to during Coronavirus and lockdown, and like the queue people are currently stood in waiting to see their doctor and get their diagnosis.

These sand art footprints would form the basis of a film they have made to go out across social media to raise awareness and encourage people to sign an open letter asking the UK government to make this crisis a priority.

Rich, Mark and Dunc made their way across Yorkshire to Cayton Bay to make the rake art for the film, this beautiful beach is 1.5km in length and incredibly our hard working sand artists managed to fill the whole beach with a row of footprints running along the shoreline from one end of the beach to the other!

You can see the sand art footprints in Macmillan’s film at the top of this blog. Imagine each sand drawing as a person, being swept away indiscriminately by the tide regardless of age, background, lifestyle, wealth or character. Don’t let these people be washed away like the footprints we created.

Please sign Macmillan’s open letter and call on the UK government to urgently take action to clear this backlog and get people on the road to treatment and recovery.