artSprint Live Auction night!

Thanks to everyone who helped to make last Friday night an amazing success, we raised a whopping £2000+ for the wonderful charity the Nicaragua Solidarity Campaign.

Thanks to Andrew Kelleher for writing us this review:

Nicaragua is a word that conjures up images of civil war, poverty and gun running.

WELL… 12foot6’s very own Asa and Kim are addressing those problems one by one.

Swap gun running for fun running (even though I’m only calling it a ‘fun run’ because gun and fun rhyme) and swap civil war and poverty for ‘art auction.’ Not just any art auction though - this was ArtSprint 2012.

In need of sponsorship money for their impending marathon, the girls wracked their brains for a way to extract money from the public, and actually came up with a method that was surprisingly unpainful for everyone involved.

Kim and Asa gathered 70 art works – all very kindly donated by much-loved established artists and those on the way up. The gathering was achieved through a mixture of the universally loved methods of cold-calling and spam email (and knowing lots of talented people.)

The venue was The Miller pub near London Bridge. But don’t think just because this pub was south of the river it didn’t have major pulling power…

Turning the air musical was John Twinn and his excellent band The Invisible Gentry (available at all good iTunes.)

And playing everything that needed to be played was Fu&Spig, on the record players.

The Mighty Booth brought their strangely addictive photo booth and props down as well.

Auctioneering on the night was handled more than ably by Tom Mortimer - sitting there like Dave Allen on his stool, controlling the cash flow and keeping order with charm and brutishness.

The money poured in, and everyone from keen art buyers to drunken lunatics were swept away by the atmosphere. Targets were reached, and friendships were made and lost in the struggle to outbid strangers and associates.

Everyone agreed it was a really really good night. That might change when bank statements come through the post, but for the time being, very well done to Asa and Kim for the months of work leading up to a very excellent night.

Good luck to both ladies in their quest to win the marathon on April 22^nd. Only one of you can actually win it – but you’ll both be winners, in a way.

(Let’s just hope the money doesn’t get siphoned off into child armies and all that stuff. Which we have no reason to believe it will. Fingers crossed.)