A busy square in the town centre, a quiet patch of green behind the library, a walkway near Bluewater you’ve passed a hundred times without looking twice, these are the kinds of places where art will quietly, and playfully, take root.
Meet Gayle. The creative lead behind Dartford We’re Going on a Bear Hunt art trail. Gayle will be working with a panel of stakeholders to shortlist designs, with sponsors making their final selections in February 2026. Gayle will also be responsible for selecting and supporting the artists behind each design while shaping the trail’s overall visual identity.
But for her, this is more than just a project. It’s a chance to connect people, through art, to something deeper - to the stories, emotions, and experiences that shape our lives. For ellenor, it’s an opportunity to gently open up conversations helping people see hospice care not as an ending, but as a continuation of love and support.
Ask her what the bears mean, she won’t start with fibreglass. Or plinths. Or paint.
She’ll talk about a girl in a gallery, seeing a Claudette Johnson or Jordan Casteel portrait for the first time. She’ll talk about faith, and loss, and the kind of art that doesn’t just hang on a wall – but that reaches out to you.
Now, Gayle stands at the helm of one of Dartford’s most ambitious cultural undertakings: ellenor’s 2026 public art trail, inspired by the beloved children’s book We’re Going on a Bear Hunt. A celebration of place, resilience, and creativity, the trail will see 30 large bear sculptures and 30 smaller cubs installed across the Borough of Dartford in July 2026 – painted by professional, early career artists, schoolchildren, and community groups alike.
The trail is led by ellenor – a local hospice charity that supports patients and families facing life-limiting and life-threatening illness – and Gayle is both its creative lead and an artist herself. It’s a rare combination: someone with the heart of the project in her hands and the paint on her fingertips.
Born into a creative family, Gayle worked in schools both before and after earning her Master’s in Fine Art - supporting young people to express themselves and find their artistic voice as she built her career.
At ellenor, Gayle’s role is to help curate, coordinate, and connect with the artists taking part – selecting them from the submissions and hand-picking the right blend of local and national creatives. “I’m here to walk alongside the artists who will be painting the bear sculptures,” Gayle says. Drawing from her own experience as an artist – which includes exhibiting at Saatchi Gallery and mentoring gap-year students at Sotheby’s Institute of Art – Gayle understands how powerful the best artwork can be at bridging the gaps between worlds.
“What I bring to this project is the knowledge that art has to engage an audience,” Gayle says. “The trail allows families to be invited into the art world – a space they might otherwise have felt excluded from. In galleries, the art world can feel like a pretentious, prestigious place that people don’t feel they can walk into. But with ellenor’s trail, the art is outside, in the environment – where they can interact with it. It bridges the gap between the art world and regular people who want a better understanding of how to read art in a welcoming setting.”
But ellenor’s bear trail isn’t just about ushering art out of the confines of a gallery’s closed doors. For Gayle, it’s about raising awareness of ellenor’s work and making space for connection – even in the hardest seasons of life.
Each of the 60 sculptures – which will be sprinkled throughout Dartford’s urban area and across the Bluewater shopping complex – will have a plaque with a QR code. Scanning them will bring up stories about the lives ellenor has touched: be that the journey of a patient, a word from the family of someone ellenor has supported on what it means to them, or reflections on why hospice care is so much more than we might, at first, think.
The nature of the animals selected for ellenor’s public art trail – bears, rather than the elephants, owls, and sheep also available from Wild in Art’s sculptural menagerie – is the perfect thematic fit. In Michael Rosen and Helen Oxenbury’s We’re Going on a Bear Hunt, the central family’s titular quest takes them through hardship – from a deep, cold river to a big, dark forest to, finally, a narrow, gloomy cave. The art trail won’t be so dangerous, Gayle is quick to explain but added the symbolism – especially for families facing difficult times – is undeniable.
