What's the problem?

Pero's Bridge - AKA the Horny Bridge - on the harbourside in Bristol has a problem. Hundreds of heavy padlocks ("love locks"), put there by people who are clearly unaware of how a counterbalanced lifting bridge operates or that Pero's bridge is named in honour of a slave. They look bloody awful too, and some have very rude words or advertising on them.

Paris removed all theirs.

A few years ago, Bristol Council removed the Pero's Bridge ones too, but budgets are tighter now so we should make this a community effort! They're ugly, schmaltzy and damaging - let's lose the locks.

What do you need £250 for?

• To get all the locks off we need enough tools for a team of people to use:
• Beefy boltcutters (ratcheting or hydraulic) for the larger locks.
• Smaller boltcutters for the smaller locks.
• We will cut off as many locks as we can, starting with the ones on the lifting section of the bridge. The aim is to completely rid the bridge of locks.

Why not just borrow some boltcutters and do this without crowdfunding?

We need at least six sets of boltcutters for a team to be able to cut off all the locks in a night (and without them blunting). One of these needs to be a serious rebar cutter to go through the larger locks. One person with one set of cutters won't make a dent in the bridge. 

Also, if we can raise enough awareness through this campaign, perhaps people will stop attaching locks to this beautiful bridge.

What happens to the money?

When finished I will sharpen and sell the boltcutters, and donate all money raised to the brilliant charity Relate (NB this campaign has no endorsement from them). I won't keep a penny of what's given.

What happens to the padlocks?

When the council removed them before, they simply went straight to recycling. We're doing better than that: anyone who donates over £10 gets to give one of these padlocks a good home (caveats: if the Love the Locks campaign doesn't beat us, subject to availability, blah, blah). We know these locks are precious to whoever put them there, so we reckon this is a good compromise. 

Also, if you're an artist who wants to do an installation, get in touch on getyourlockout@gmail.com

Hey, I put one of those padlocks there!

Anyone who emails getyourlockout@gmail.com with proof one of the padlocks is theirs will be able to have it back (collection or pay P&P), if it gets cut off.

So this is definitely going to happen?

There is a snag: a friend of mine weirdly thinks the padlocks are great, and has started a rival Love the Locks campaign. Who knows, maybe they're right and I'm just being a killjoy? We've agreed that if their campaign raises more than this one, they will "buy" the boltcutters off me before they get used, and so the padlocks will remain on the bridge. All proceeds from both campaigns will be donated to Relate.

So even if we hit our target, please keep donating! The more we raise, the more likely the locks will be cut off. (And the more we raise for Relate, who do amazing work and deserve all our support.)

I've set up getyourlockout.co.uk/campaign/ to see how the campaigns are doing.