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NO PICNIC FOR ASHDOWN FOREST AS FAMOUS TEDDY BEAR RHYME REWORKED FOR NATIONAL LOTTERY CAMPAIGN

18th January 2014

Saturday, January 18, 2014: The classic children’s nursery rhyme The Teddy Bear’s Picnic has been reworked to draw attention to The National Lottery’s funding of Ashdown Forest in East Sussex.

Renamed ‘Teddy Bear’s Pic-nicked’, the rhyme is released on Winnie The Pooh Day, as Ashdown Forest was the real-life setting of Pooh’s famous home, Hundred Acre Wood. The new artworked version of the rhyme is released to mark Day 18 of The National Lottery’s ‘Just Imagine’, a nationwide campaign to raise awareness of the massive impact that £31 billion in project funding has had across the UK since the first National Lottery draw 20 years ago this year.

While the idyllic Ashdown Forest provided the inspiration for Pooh’s Hundred Acre Wood home, the hand drawn water-colour painting re-imagines the forest without National Lottery funding. The image shows the forest closed to visitors and animals fleeing to find a new home.

Ashdown Forest was one of the areas to benefit from £2.7 million of National Lottery funding, awarded by the Heritage Lottery Fund, to enhance the special habitats and restore the medieval forests surrounding Weald Forest Ridge in Sussex. In total, National Lottery funding has preserved 70,500 hectares of wildlife and woodland habitats through grants totalling more than £26 million.

The rhyme runs as follows:

If you go down to the woods today you're sure of a big surprise

If you go down to the woods today you won’t believe your eyes

For all the woods that ever there was are neglected today just because

today's the day the forest has got no funding

#JustImagine what our forests would be like without £26m of National Lottery

funding since 1994.

To enable people to learn more about National Lottery funded projects in their area, the National Lottery has launched a ‘Good Cause Finder’. To see projects in your area, or to find out more about Just Imagine January, visit www.lotterygoodcauses.org.uk

-ENDS-

Notes to editors

For press enquiries relating to the Just Imagine campaign:
Jim Williams jim.williams@fasttrackagency.com 07814 068 349
Alex Bake alex.bake@fasttrackagency.com 07552 289 290

For press enquiries relating to the National Lottery:
Michael Thompson, Head of Media at the National Lottery Promotions Unit, on 07734 295745.
Weblinks

Website: www.lotterygoodcauses.org.uk
Twitter: @lottogoodcauses #JustImagine
Facebook: www.facebook.com/LotteryGoodCauses
About the National Lottery Promotions Unit
The National Lottery Promotions Unit (NLPU) is responsible for raising awareness of Lottery funding to Good Causes. Amongst other initiatives, NLPU manages the National Lottery Awards.
National Lottery funding is awarded through 12 distributing bodies: Big Lottery Fund, UK Sport, Sport England, Sport Wales, Sport NI, Sportscotland, Heritage Lottery Fund, Arts Council England, Arts Council Wales, Arts Council NI, Creative Scotland and the British Film Institute.

Over £31 billion has been awarded to good cause projects across the UK since the launch of the National Lottery back in 1994. Currently, £33 million of good cause funding is raised every week by National Lottery players.