Life-size ice sculpture forms dramatic centrepiece of MND charity’s Prescribe Life campaign

Commissioned by the MND Association and created by Covent Garden-based company icebox, the sculpture of Seckin McGuirk, who is living with MND, has been hand carved from more than a tonne of ice as part of the Association’s Prescribe Life campaign.

Standing at just over a metre tall, the sculpture, which has taken icebox’s Head of Creative, Csaba Vass more than a week to create, shows Seckin, a former maths teacher from Rugby, who was diagnosed with MND last year, in her wheelchair. On Thursday, the sculpture was assembled in Parliament Square Gardens in Westminster to urge the Government to make a ground-breaking drug called tofersen available to everyone living with SOD1 MND – a genetic form of the terminal, neurological disease.

As the sculpture began to melt away in the heat of the midsummer sun, it was a shocking reminder that some people living with SOD1 MND – like Seckin - are still being denied access to the drug, despite it being proven to slow, or even halt progression of the disease. NHS constraints mean that only a small number of people currently have access to a drug which could save their lives while others don’t – a decision with potentially devastating consequences.

Csaba said it had been a huge privilege to work with the Association to bring the campaign’s vision to life.

He said: “My aim was to make the sculpture as delicate as possible. Using images of Seckin, I created the design using 3D software and then transferred the design onto blocks of ice which were carved using chainsaws and then chisels.

“It’s been a huge project to be involved with and one which I hope will have a big impact.”

As part of Thursday’s day of action, a petition containing 21,000 signatures was handed into Minister of State at the Department of Health and Social Care, Karin Smyth MP, urging the Government to do more.

For more information about the campaign or to sign the petition visit www.mndassociation.org