Edinburgh to welcome pride of 25 life-sized bronze lions for exhibition in The Meadows

An international wildlife charity will bring an exhibition of 25 life-sized bronze lions to Edinburgh next month.

The free, family friendly, outdoor sculpture installation, named ‘Born Free Forever’, will arrive in The Meadows in early October.

To celebrate the exhibition’s opening on October 6, local youngsters are invited to take part in a lion-themed art workshop with Edinburgh-born wildlife artist Jane Lee McCracken.

The charity, Born Free, launched the UK-wide exhibition to honour what would have been the 100th birthday of its co-founder Bill Travers MBE, who died in 1994.

Travers and his wife Virginia McKenna MBE set up the wildlife charity, after starring in two iconic films featuring wild animals – Born Free and An Elephant Who Moved Slowly.

The exhibition pages homage to Born Free, which tells the story of a couple who raised Elsa the Lioness, an orphaned lion cub, to adulthood, before releasing her into the wild in Kenya. Its bronze centrepiece features Elsa standing on top of a vintage 4x4, surrounded by cubs, capturing the essence of the classic 1966 film.

Each lion in the exhibition tells a story about the plight facing the animal, which could become extinct in the wild within 30 years.

International wildlife charity Born Free is bringing an exhibition of 25 life-sized bronze lions to The Meadows, Edinburgh

The charity hopes that the installation will raise awareness and vital funds for their lion conservation work. Currently, Born Free is helping to conserve and safeguard lion populations in Kenya, Ethiopia, and Sudan.

The ‘Born Free Forever’ exhibition can be found in The Meadows, Edinburgh, from October through to January.