Auntie Beeb’s picked up the story here, with a clarification from Cllr Gary Hopkins on what the council policy is going to be. Sounds promising!

You may have heard of this by now, but if not you should do. There’s a charity fundraising drive going on at the moment called ‘Get Dring Mobile’, which is aiming to raise enough money to sort the legendary Mike Dring of Art-el fame out with a a modified vehicle he can drive himself. For those as don’t know, here’s the backstory from the fundraising website;

Michael Dring was 23 years old when he broke his neck in a road traffic accident, resulting in paralysis from the upper chest down – medically he is classified as having a complete Spinal Cord Injury (SCI) resulting in Tetraplegia (level C6).   Between April 2009 and April 2010, friends and family of Michael are attempting to raise money to put towards the purchase of an adapted car which will enable him to drive independently.

Being the kind of bloke he is, this isn’t just about Mike either;

Any additional funds raised over and above the amount needed will be either donated to Salisbury Spinal Unit or go towards a lasting legacy of this project.  Michael has been so inspired by this initiative that currently he is exploring the possibility of setting up an official charity in order to help other people regain any loss of independence due to SCI.  If Michael succeeds in setting up this charity any additional funds will go towards this charity which will assist others to afford hand controls or vehicle adaptations.

So, lots of stuff going on as a fundraiser, but one element of it, natch, is raising funds through grafurbanstreet art. A call was put out for people to donate pieces to a fundraising auction which has had a huge response, so they’re now going to be holding the thing down at Paintworks, viewing of the pieces on the 14th and 15th of October 2009, with the auction starting at 7pm on the 15th. Get down there early on the 15th though, as there’s going to be music and live painting from 4pm, with Inkie and Mr Jago just some of the names confirmed so far.

If you’ve got a piece you’d like to donate to the auction then there’s still plenty of time. The line up’s pretty special already.

Xenz
Mr Jago
SPQR
China Mike
Rourke Vandal
Will Barras
Levi C
James Baker
Angel 41
Dan Kitchener
Ripper 1331
Hero
Grafter
Dell
Ill Joseph
Carrie Reichardt aka The Baroness
Whatson
Nick Walker
Damon Ginandes
K Guy
Eelus
Ben Allen
Mudwig
Dora
Brian Jones
Tom Hine
Eco
Pinky
Guy Mckinley
Andy Council
Ria Hill
Richt
Misteraitch
Milk
Pam Glew
Guy Denning
Replete
Mau Mau
Inkie
Doc
Romanywg
Jody
Dicy
Simon Riley
Tesura
Agent Provocateur
Kay7four
Idiom
CZK
Neverwork
Meexed
Iamcxxx
L.E.T
FAKE
Oliver Winconek
Jef Aersol
Crazy Jake
Ian Francis
Leftery
Rene Gagnon
Dan Baldwin
Cheba
Soker
Acer One
Cartrain
MrTGrowth
Rowdy

There’s loads of other fundraising stuff going on too, and this bit should be a great event for an extremely worthy cause. The only thing to work out now is how to stop Mike bidding on the pieces himself.