Festival of Ideas Reimagined

Since 2012, when I made a tiny book for every day of the year I've thought about creating a giant walk in book. So I was delighted at the beginning of this year that UHArts invited me to create a big book to bring along to the Festival of Ideas at University of Herts; the plan was that I'd create the book with the help of diverse groups of children, students and adults as part of the New Geographies engagement and then use it for further activities during the festival.

Assumed the book, like much of my other participatory work, would be put on hold but was very pleased to be invited to create the book to use as an online resource to share during the online Festival of Ideas Reimagined.

The book explores some of the recurring themes that emerged from my engagement work with New Geographies over the past three years, particularly responding to the work of artists Stuart Whipps and Krijn de Koning.

Look here for a short video about the book and how I'd like to use it and some simple art activities for children and adults to do at home:

One day I hope to take the actual book out into the world and to make some more!

concertina book reminder

Been enjoying working in some schools recently.  This video about making a simple concertina book with a snug cover and spine is for teachers who have attended my CPD sessions on cross curricula bookmaking - it's not designed as a tutorial - more a reminder of what people already know! Hope it's useful.  

Friday 5th January 2017

Delighted to say that you can buy my tiny handmade facebooks at The House of Illustration shop near King's Cross.  They are handmade and bound, printed on cotton rag paper with archival inks: £10.00 each.

Friday 23rd June 2017

Family Garden

Been a long time since I posted anything here.  This is a picture I painted today of roses from our garden.

I'm making a painting for each month of this year of flowers picked from the garden.

I'm also writing/drawing daily about my childhood and my children's early lives - I like the way different memories pop up, partly because of family anniversaries and seasonal reminders, but also because of my ever changing personal preoccupations - I am allowing myself to write whatever comes to mind - I hope to find some patterns later and expect it to fall neatly into chapters when I analyse it at the end of the year!

Here is a picture of a pull string strawberry music box that our daughter Bronwen played with when she was a toddler.  She could hum the song before she could talk: the verse of "It's a Small World" by the Sherman Brothers.  I have no idea what happened to it - it was very popular in 1983.