HOW DID BRICKRUNNERS START Like most kids I was obsessed with Lego, building things on- and off-plan from a young age, even attempting stop-frame animation with the castle set at the age of 9 on a Hi8 video camera. Skip to 2018 and my friend and fellow Spinal Research ambassador, Eric Keeler, was running across the US; from Lubec, Maine to Santa Monica, California. Over 8 months I illustrated Eric’s journey as a BrickRunner along with one of my own characters, Bear. Slowly, Eric evolved from hand drawn cartoons to a digital mascot. In May 2019 while fundraising for Berlin Marathon, I started illustrating everyone as their very own BrickRunner as a way of saying thanks to supporters. It wasn’t long before a few people turned into a sponsorship from the National Running Show and a growing community of BrickRunners. In March of 2020, there were over 400 BrickRunners and it was time to launch BrickRunners properly HOW DOES BRICKRUNNERS WORK WITH CHARITIES BrickRunners occasionally changes its fundraising goals. Whether that’s to fund a different charity or to meet a fundraising target for a race. Whatever we do, we want to make sure that everything we do has a positive impact on the world around us, through our actions and through our community. We want to work towards supporting small charities, charities like Spinal Research that don’t get the same funding as larger charities or who aren’t as visible and recognised as others but also be able to pick initiatives that help raise the profile of any charity and engage people to get involved. HOW DOES IT WORK By commissioning a digital character or getting a print done, we’re able to spend more time working on BrickRunners. This allows us to do more charitable projects like supporting Mind for RED January, Miles for Mind with runr and various other initiatives that we have the pleasure or working with. We’re also planning more for Spinal Injury Awareness month in September and other events throughout the year. It also