Lego lovers set to build giant mosaic on The Mound

But Lego lovers of all ages will have the chance to help create a masterpiece by working together on a vast 120,000-brick mosaic on The Mound on Saturday.

The picture of some of Scotland's endangered species will be built as part of the First Foot festival, billed as Scotland's first sustainable living week, and running in parallel with this year's Science Festival.

The mosaic, measuring five metres by four metres, is the brainchild of festival organiser Lianne Walker. She said: "I wanted to get across the message about conserving our endangered species but to do it in a very interactive and fun way. I came up with the idea of trying to create some kind of sculpture and thought 'What better than Lego?' It's something that most of us have had since we were kids and it's great fun and it's colourful."

She sought help from Warren Elsmore, who lives in the city centre and is a member of the Brickish Association, a group for adult Lego enthusiasts.

He said: "Lianne wanted something that would be interactive with the kids and eye-catching, and mosaics are something that we've done as an association before for a variety of different people and it's great, it gets everybody involved."

Ms Walker created an image featuring nine endangered species, including a red kite, wild cat, dolphin and fritillary butterfly, and gave it to Mr Elsmore, who said: "What we do is take the image and run it through software to cut the number of colours so it's only Lego colours and then resize it and work out how many bricks we need, and it spits us out a set of instructions for each baseplate, which is about one foot square, and everyone who comes along can work on a baseplate."

A team of volunteers will then assemble the baseplates to create the giant picture. Mr Elsmore provided the contacts for Ms Walker to hire thousands of bricks, so at the end of the day, the volunteers will have to take the mosaic apart and sort all 120,000 of them.

The event will run from 10am to 4pm, is free to take part, and expected to attract Lego fans of all ages, according to Mr Elsmore. He said: "We get as many adults coming along to build these as we do kids."

The First Foot festival also includes a talk on wildlife photography, a sustainable Gardener's Question Time, and a screening of a film on overfishing called End of the Line.

For tickets and information see www.firstfoot.org.uk.