Project Chimps: Retirement Retreat

Project Chimps is a 236-acre chimpanzee sanctuary in the Blue Ridge Mountains of North Georgia in the US. Their mission is to provide lifelong, exemplary care to chimps retired from research. Today, they are home to 59 chimpanzees, and are working to bring more than 150 more to permanent sanctuary. The overall aim is to give these chimps a forever home: a place they can flourish and receive the care they need to survive. While the organisation has garnered support from celebrities like Rachael Ray, Kat Von D, Billie Joe and Adrienne Armstrong, and Judy Greer, they must continue to build awareness around this important work to get the remaining chimps out of the lab. Project Chimps was built not only to provide a new home for former research chimpanzees but also to provide them with the kind of lives they never realised were possible. After lifetimes spent in captivity they are finally free to forage, climb and play at a scientifically-designed sanctuary that could be seen as a Disneyland for chimps. They can explore chimpanzee villas, with multi-story, open-air “porches” and climate-controlled interior “bedrooms.” They can receive the exemplary care they deserve, including optimum nutrition, preventative and diagnostic veterinary care. Ranging in age, from eight-years-old to 34, the chimps likely see their new home at Project Chimps in vastly different ways. For younger chimps, it may seem like a playground of possibilities. For older chimps it may appear as a retirement community. And for chimps that have never been outside, it could be seen as a wooded wonderland. To showcase this world of possibilities, through a chimp’s imaginative eyes, Huge designed three iterations of Project Chimps Maps which ran across Georgia to raise awareness and donations for the organisation.