Hidden Gruffalo stones spark passion to reclaim park

When artist Lizzi Chambers from Sutton Coldfield decorated her son's nursery, she came up with the idea of painting Gruffalo themed stones.

Once the room was finished, she had a few left over, and knew they couldn't go to waste.

After seeing local residents post on social media that they were avoiding Sutton Park because of antisocial behaviour concerns, she came up with an idea: to hide her decorated stones for children to find.

"I thought I might do something nice and then, you know, maybe that'll have the same effect in a different way - just to get people into the park because there's something nice happening there as well, amplifying the good stuff," Chambers said.

After an overwhelmingly positive reaction from the local community, she continued to decorate stones for the park.

Over the past few months she has hidden dozens of them, featuring characters from Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs, The Lion King, and even Celebrity Traitors.

"I sort of made it a bit of a project and I thought... a nice thing would be to do children's book and classic children's characters to really make it a thing for children to go and do," she said.

"I'm really enjoying it and it's been lovely to see how many people have really bought into it and you know, it's just over the way from the children's play area.

"So I've even been putting them out myself or taking my own children to the park and I've even seen people looking and that's lovely."

Reaction from local residents has been positive, with Chambers even making Traitors and Halloween themed stones, to keep up with the demand.

The mum plans to continue hiding them until Christmas, while people are still interested in looking for them.

"It's getting harder because obviously I've got my own children and it's half term and we all, we've all been ill so just sort of squeezing it in," she added.

"I thought, you know, I'll definitely do it until Christmas."

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