Social media campaign for Adelaide girl goes viral

Culture

Social media campaign for Adelaide girl goes viral

Words by Walter Marsh September 28, 2015

A surprise social media campaign to support an Adelaide theatre student battling cancer has gained a worldwide following.

‘Cranes For Lauren’ was coined to support then-20 year old Lauren Krelshem, an AC Arts student who has been in and out of hospital with leukemia since the age of 13. After a relapse forced the budding thespian to return to treatment on the cusp of her 21^st birthday, friends in the performing arts community hatched a plan to give her an unforgettable virtual 21st gift.

A lover of paper cranes who embarked on the task of folding 1000 cranes during treatment, friends decided to surprise Lauren on her birthday with an outpouring of support in origami form. Starting a secret Facebook group ‘Cranes For Lauren’, friend Jen Frith encouraged people to make and photograph a crane in support of Lauren to be made public on September 28 as well as sending cranes to be presented in person.

The response was staggering, with thousands flocking to the group and sending the message worldwide. Before long supporters included actors Ruby Rose, Margot Robbie, Matt Lucas and Noah Taylor, sports stars and anthropomorphic bears along with countless members of Australia’s performing arts community folding paper and sending their support.

The cast of Cats via Facebook

Humphrey B. Bear via Facebook

Margot Robbie via Facebook

Noah Taylor via Facebook

Ricky Ponting via Facebook

Ruby Rose via Facebook

Matt Lucas and Craig Mather

It’s all a pretty amazing effort, both the outpouring of support and the incredible way in which it’s managed to spread like wildfire around social media while still remaining a secret until this morning, when an “incredibly moved” Krelshem was added to the group and presented with many many thousands of cranes.

Twenty thousand cranes for Lauren, twenty wishes, one long healthy life ahead of her #cranesforlauren pic.twitter.com/HhcY3JYmet

— amelia✌️ (@ameliaah) September 28, 2015

As Krelshem’s father Michael explains, both he and group founder Frith were blown away by the response to the group. “She [Frith] knew Lauren was struggling a bit, so she set up this cranes group to give her a bit of a morale boost and show there’s a lot of support,” he explains. “She started the group, told me about it in the first week and we never thought it would grow this big!”

“Cranes from all over the world, we had over 20,000 here today, “Lauren’s on cloud nine!”

Here’s our contribution, excusing our total lack of paper folding skills. Happy birthday Lauren!