Grayson Perry has given his backing to an Evening Standard appeal to raise money for child food poverty charity The Felix Project.
The artist is putting one of his works up for auction – a woodprint of a half-bear, half-bull creature that he created for his 2016 Channel 4 series on masculinity, All Man.
Perry told the Evening Standard that he donated the artwork to “help out a bit”.
The Felix Project, which redistributes surplus food from supermarkets and wholesalers to UK children, currently works with over 120 charities and 90 suppliers.
As part of its Help A Hungry Child appeal, the newspaper is raising money for stalls to be set up at 120 of London’s most deprived primary schools, reaching around 50,000 children and their families.
Children will be invited to select the fresh produce and other food they need before they go home at the end of the school day. They will each be given a paper bag to fill with donated food donated.
Every £1 donated will pay for a nutritious meal for a pupil and their family, while £500 will allow a new school to enrol on the programme, the newspaper said.
As part of its day-to-day operations, The Felix Project provides a free door-to-door service, collecting surplus food from suppliers, and delivering it to charities.
More than 10 million tonnes of food is wasted in the UK each year, according to the charity. And one in ten children lives with parents who struggle to put food on the table, meaning an estimated 870,000 children in England go to bed hungry.
Ian McKellen, Jon Hamm, Frank Lampard and Daisy Lowe are among the other celebrities to have supported the charity, which was set up by Justin Byam Shaw, one of the owners of the Evening Standard.
