Helen Marriage on The Sultan's Elephant and large acts of public imagination

I would like to think that when I reach the end of my life that I will have very few regrets. I know that I will have one though, which is that I was not in London on Thursday May 4th 2006, and for the days that followed. For those 4 days, a huge puppet elephant and an 8 metre-tall girl, walked around the city, entrancing and charming the million or so people who came to see them. It was a magical event that moved people deeply, and which brought the city together in an amazing way, just 9 months after the 7/7 bombings. It brought the imagination into the heart of one of Europe's largest cities, and is one of the best examples of that that I've been able to find. One of the people central to it happening was Helen Marriage of creative company 'Artichoke'.  She very kindly agreed to speak to me, so I started by asking her, for anyone who didn't see 'The Sultan's Elephant', as the project was known, to tell us a bit more about it.