A customised guitar that Ed Sheeran donated to a charity auction has raised £52,765 for a primary school in his hometown.
The guitar, which features symbolism from his recent album ‘=’, including a custom maple inlay at the seventh fret, a butterfly inlay motif at the truss rod cover and neck heel cap, and a custom-designed edition internal label, was designed alongside Northern Ireland-based guitar maker George Lowden.
Sheeran donated the instrument to Suffolk charity GeeWizz as part of a raffle prize to raise money for a SMART music pod and disabled access facilities at Sir Robert Hitcham’s CEVA School in Sheeran’s hometown of Framlingham.
Tickets were priced at £5 with 10,553 sold in over 160 countries across the world. The winner of the prize was Kellie Myers and her two young sons from Ipswich who are currently learning to play guitar.
“I’m so excited! I’m thrilled and delighted to have won,” Myers said of her win. “The guitar is beautiful. My boys have been learning to play for a couple of years now. As a family we adore Ed. He really supports our community and local charities. GeeWizz is an amazing charity and they’ve been doing a lot for the local community, so we wanted to support them and Ed.”
The singer-songwriter also donated three signed Ipswich Town Football Club 2021-22 home shirts for three runners-up in the raffle. These went to Rossignol Sylvianne from France, Chris Noakes from Essex and Justin Taite from Canada.
Meanwhile, Sheeran‘s ‘Shape Of You’ has become the first song to reach three billion streams on Spotify.
The song, taken from the pop star’s third album ‘÷ (Divide)’, reached the milestone on Wednesday (December 22) – after initially being released on the streaming service back in January, 2017.
Speaking on the achievement in a video shared by Spotify (see below), Sheeran said he couldn’t be more “chuffed” about the news, calling it, “absolutely insane”, before discussing the origin of the song.