A much-loved campaigner from Kingston has helped restore damaged street mosaics in the area.

Des Kay, the director of the Save The World Club in Kingston, attended the Palace of Westminster earlier this year after being shortlisted for the Climate Coalition's Individual Inspiration award.

Together with Save The World Club and resident artist Kim Pirrelli from the area, Mr Kay helped construct two beautiful mosaics, in Malden and Kingston respectively, that subsequently sustained damage.

Mr Kay told the Surrey Comet how the community collaborated to an incredible degree on the larger of two mosaics, at Malden Manor, which was damaged after its unveiling in March this year.

"Through some crowdfunding and with the council, Save The World Club ended up funding and making the mosaic at Malden Manor, which is about 17 metres long. We had about a thousand helpers and it has around a million individual pieces, tiles in it.

"It's a tribute to the Pre-Raphaelite (painting) Ophelia by John Everett Millais, who painted the work in this spot and we wanted to compliment that, but it sustained damage after we opened it in March," he said. 

Mr Kay described how the beautiful centre-piece of the mosaic — an urban fox — had its eye tiles gouged out after it was unveiled.

The vandalism did little to deter the local campaigner and the Club.

"We immediately patched that up," he said, adding that several instances of graffiti were also removed from the wall before the group's efforts prevailed over efforts to damage it.

"We cleaned up all the graffiti and some damage that had been made to it and its been absolutely fine ever since I'm glad to say," Mr Kay said.

The second mosaic is located under Kingston railway bridge and was damaged after a homeless man in the area was attacked.

"He had his possessions burnt and one of the central panels of the mosaic was also damaged," Mr Kay said, lamenting the incident before describing how he and the Save The World Club reacted.

"I restored the space between the panels and stencilled a poem that I wrote onto the panel that's still there:

"Kicking someone when they're down

There's no room for you in our compassionate town."

If you're interested in getting involved with the community and environmental work done by Save The World Club, visit the website at: http://savetheworldclub.org/