IT’S fast becoming the landmark tribute to frontline workers during the coronavirus crisis … and it’s now a way that people who have been clapping every Thursday can donate money to the NHS.

A striking animated image of giant blue clapping hands is being projected in a Batman-like beam onto buildings nationwide, including Salts Mill, to say thank you to health staff and all the other people who have kept frontline services going.

The idea came from six-year-old Elliott Berry who loves clapping for the NHS and when his artist dad, Ian, made the distinctive blue hands from denim – a material he uses for all his highly distinctive artwork - Elliott had the idea to project it onto buildings.

The idea quickly took off and the clapping denim hands are now being projected across the UK and worldwide from Brazil to Sweden.

People who see it and love it can donate to help NHS charities by going to iclapfor.com/donate

Ian, who comes from Huddersfield, said: “It’s great that people support the NHS by clapping but we’ve tried to take it to another level by projecting onto buildings in the hope that people who clap will now think about donating as the NHS really does need the money along with the moral support.

“A fiver from every family who makes that effort every Thursday will mean such a huge difference. We know from Col Tom Moore raising more than £33m for NHS Charities Together that the public’s enthusiasm for donating is there but just needs something to focus it. Clapping is that focus at the moment.”

Ian is also giving people the chance to say who they are clapping for – be it friends, relatives, frontline workers or medical staff that have saved their lives – and the messages can also be projected onto buildings or posted on social media.

He does this by posing the question, ‘who do you clap for?’ using the hashtag #iclapfor on a special website iclapfor.com Here’s just one message on the website that sums it all up: “I clap till my hands hurt for all the people who don’t realise they deserve it.”

Projectionists across the UK saw what he’d done and then did the same in their towns and cities from Edinburgh Castle to Canary Wharf in London … and the idea has now gone global with projections in Brazil, Sweden and the USA.

Projectionists wanting to contact Ian so they can project the clapping onto buildings in their areas can do so by going to iclapfor.com/projections