The exhibition brings together the Sketch for Survival 100, selected from this year’s international art competition, Sketch for Survival Junior, and a unique 10th Anniversary Collection celebrating some of the artists and supporters who have helped shape the initiative over the past decade.

Among the anniversary contributors are previous winners, shortlisted artists and long-standing supporters including Johanna Excel, Rachel Toll, Jonesy, Carol Barrett, Louise Hancox and Sarah Lake. There is celebrity art too, including a watercolour by Dame Judi Dench and a sketch by Sir Ranulph Fiennes, patron of Explorers Against Extinction.

Ten years and a story that began with elephants

The story behind Sketch for Survival goes back to the peak of the African elephant poaching crisis.

At the time, the statistics were devastating: on average, one African elephant was being lost to poaching every 26 minutes. The idea behind Sketch for Survival was deliberately simple. Artists and celebrity supporters were invited to spend just 26 minutes creating a wildlife sketch, using art to make that shocking statistic tangible.

Those first 26-minute sketches became the starting point for what has grown into a global art initiative. Over the last decade, artists from 124 countries have participated, while funds generated by the initiative and wider conservation campaign have enabled support for frontline projects in more than 30 countries.

Ten years on, elephants are still threatened. However, the challenges facing elephants and the communities living alongside them are changing. Habitat loss and fragmentation, climate pressures and growing human-elephant conflict increasingly shape the conservation response. Protecting elephants is about finding ways for people and elephants to successfully share landscapes.

That changing story is reflected in the projects being supported this year.

Feeding the Future - Reteti Elephant Sanctuary, Kenya

Reteti Elephant Sanctuary in northern Kenya is Africa’s first community-owned and run elephant sanctuary.

Reteti rescues orphaned elephant calves with the aim, wherever possible, of returning them to the wild. During the pandemic, when imported specialist milk formula became difficult to obtain, the team began trialling locally sourced goat’s milk. It proved highly effective for the calves and led to an innovative programme connecting elephant care directly with the local Samburu community.

Today, a network of 'milk mamas' - local Samburu women - supply goats' milk to the sanctuary, generating income for their families while helping to feed and rehabilitate orphaned elephants. 

As the programme has expanded, so has the need for proper infrastructure.

Explorers Against Extinction is fundraising for a new milk handling and pasteurisation unit at Reteti, enabling the increasing volumes of locally sourced milk to be safely received, tested, pasteurised, cooled and stored. It is a practical investment with benefits on both sides: helping safeguard the health of orphaned elephants while strengthening local livelihoods and making the programme more sustainable.

Forest elephants and coexistence in Gabon

A second elephant-focused project takes us to the forests of Gabon, one of the most important remaining strongholds for the critically endangered African forest elephant.

Forest elephants have suffered catastrophic declines across Central Africa. They are also enormously important to the forests themselves, dispersing seeds and shaping forest structure, with an important role in maintaining the health and carbon-storage capacity of the Congo Basin rainforest.

Gabon is particularly significant because it is estimated to support around 95,000 forest elephants, approximately 75% of Africa’s remaining population. Elephants range widely beyond protected areas, bringing them into contact with people. Crop damage can have devastating consequences for rural families and can quickly undermine local tolerance for wildlife.

The challenge is not only to protect elephants, but to make human-elephant coexistence possible. Supporting communities living alongside forest elephants is critical if Gabon is to remain a stronghold for the species into the future.

It is a very different conservation challenge from the ivory crisis that inspired those first 26-minute sketches and perhaps the clearest illustration of why conservation must continue to adapt.

Art that makes a difference

All the works in the Sketch for Survival exhibition are generously donated by participating artists, turning creativity into direct support for conservation.

The Sketch for Survival 100 will be sold through the annual online fundraising auction, which concludes on Sunday 22 November 2026.

After Norwich, the collection continues its anniversary tour, culminating at London’s Oxo Gallery on the South Bank from 18–22 November, giving visitors another opportunity to see the collection before the auction concludes.

A decade after those first 26-minute sketches, the threats facing wildlife continue to evolve and so too does the way Explorers Against Extinction uses art to tell those stories. Over the past 10 years, EAE has exhibited at COP26 in Glasgow, the Palace of Westminster, the Royal Geographical Society and London’s OXO Gallery, as well as The Explorers Club in New York - twice.

And the story continues. On 18 September Extinction: Renewal - Art of a Living Planet opens at the Eden Project in Cornwall, a major new exhibition which will remain at Eden for a year. While separate from Sketch for Survival, it shares the same belief that has driven Explorers Against Extinction for the past decade: that art has the power to engage people with conservation, raise awareness of the pressures facing our planet, and generate vital funds for projects on the frontline.

Visit the Norwich exhibition

Crypt Gallery, Norwich School Chapel

• Thursday 1 October: 11am–5pm
• Friday 2 October: 10am–4pm
• Saturday 3 October: 10am–4pm

For more information, or to support with a donation please visit explorersagainstextinction.co.uk