Johannesburg - Three years ago, James Bateson discovered the joys of 3D printing while still a schoolboy in England. It was during the first lockdown of COVID 19. Very quickly he developed a passion for printing tiny frogs, which he would leave behind in the hope that they would be found. People were isolated and alone. This was a way of connecting.
“At first it was my reminder to my friends, that I was around and then they started giving frogs to their friends,” he remembered this week in Johannesburg. Soon it grew to something bigger, digital things could go viral, but could he do the same with a physical artefact?
Today, frogs that he designed and made have made their way to the Golden Gate bridge in San Francisco, to Copenhagen in Denmark, to Japan, Spain and across the UK. Last year, they made their way to South Africa, when he gave them to an old family friend who in turn showed it to Clive Viveiros, the founder of executive search firm, pinpoint one human resources.
Viveiros was fascinated by both the symbolism of the frog as a key factor in the ecosystem and a life giver, but also as a symbol of connectedness. He immediately began giving them out to his staff and to clients and candidates – and made the frog a focal point of his company’s birthday celebrations last year under the slogan: #LoveMeLoveMyFrog.
The uptake was so great that pinpoint one human resources partnered with a local 3D printing company to print their own frogs. They even produced a special frog, a red one, called #Placement which the COO would give to the consultant who’d made the biggest placement each day, only to be up for grabs the next day, sparking lively intra-office rivalry.
“Frogs mean different things to different people. We’ve given them to staff and we’ve given them to selected clients too who have all loved them and are clamouring for more,” said Viveiros. “The story of the frog reminds us that we are survivors and that we are resilient in the face of adversity.”
The pinpoint one campaign was precisely in the spirit of what Balkwill had set out to do. In his last year at school he secreted 400 frogs on campus and on the last day made a special giant one the size of a shoebox for his long-suffering headmaster.
He has kept on making them and giving them to people he meets up with, asking only that they send him pictures which he can then upload to social media to see how far the frogs have gone around the world. And he’s still making frogs.
Born in South Africa, he lived here for the first 10 years of his life before moving to the UK with his family. He returned for a month this year to visit family, friends and go to the dentist, but he never stopped making frogs.
“I spent my last day in South Africa making my first ever resin printed frog. It’s a process that is faster, more accurate and more durable than conventional 3D printing,” he explained.
He kept one of these new frogs too, just as he has kept a model of each frog that has been a different colour or made from a different material, whether normal plastic, carbon fibre infused plastic or any other polymer that he has experimented with.
He travelled back to the UK on Wednesday night to begin his apprenticeship as an aeronautical engineer in the UK, but Fred lives on. Some of them might even have been stashed in the houses and rooms of friends and family they visited during their trip – just like the time he borrowed a friend’s computer and left a frog inside, only to be discovered months later.
When they are finally found they are an apt reminder of so many different issues: as an indicator species for the state of the world’s ecosystem and, thanks to Bateson, something even greater, the interconnectedness of humanity and the importance of human bonds.
·If you would like to be part of the frog revolution – go to #lovemelovemyfrog on Instagram or visit www.pinpointone.co.za