LONSAS hosted a twilight event yesterday evening at the London Transport Museum where teachers could meet like-minded individuals and a wide variety of local creative practitioners and cultural organisations.
I was very pleased to participate and offer taster activies relating to my school workshops. Very friendly, relaxed atmosphere and some spectacular results from the teachers – see example below. JOHN
Click on the link to go to my LONSAS profile.
Training up the next generation of paper engineers in Our Lady Queen of Heaven Primary School in Wandsworth last Monday.
It’s amazing how far a little knowledge can go. I also like to think I’m providing a back door (and a pop-up one at that!) to books, reading and writing, as well as helping the fight against graphophobia.
Training up the next generation of paper engineers in Our Lady Queen of Heaven Primary School in Wandsworth last Monday.
It’s amazing how far a little knowledge can go. I also like to think I’m providing a back door (and a pop-up one at that!) to books, reading and writing, as well as helping the fight against graphophobia.
A big thanks to the children of Mount Carmel in Ealing for letting me spend World Book Day with them. JOHN
And thanks to the children in Reception for joining in so enthusiastically
– 1, 2, 3, WATCH OUT IN THE JUNGLE!!!
I spent two days last week in Cunningham Hill Infants School in St Albans where I worked with 5 classes of Y1s and Y2s as a visiting paper engineer. I brought along collapsible cardboard frameworks for the children to use to create giant pop-up structures.
As well as working on small-scale individual pop-ups, they worked as a team on the larger pieces. Each class used a story they’d been studying and, in the case of year 2, the challenge was to connect Shakespeare’s The Tempest and Twelfth Night, and paper engineering.
The solution was to produce stage-like structures representing the setting for each play which, believe or not, still folded flat by the end.
I left each class to continue working as I moved on to the next, but nothing prepared me for what I was shown at the end of day 2 (see the bottom photos).
It has to be said that none of this would have been possible without the input of a very enthusiastic head and a group of brilliant teachers.
Y e a r 1
Preparations nearly complete for next weeks school workshops!
Check back later to see what becomes of the structures. JOHN
Great news! – well for me anyway. Claws United and Rover City are scheduled for a rematch next year when The Big Match is re-launched.
Everything will stay the same apart from a possible re-design of the cover and a change to the super static-electriciy game at the back which will now become a super blow-football game. The book was conceived as a type of football handbook, using natural enemies (or are they?), cats and dogs, on the opposing sides. It covers areas such as the fans, souvenirs, football skills and rules, and takes much of it’s inspiration North London where I live.
Look out for the book in April 2012.
And to see more background material, go to my facebook page here.
I was in Maidenhead yesterday working with 5 classes of very talented children (Infants and Lower Juniors) at St Edmund Campion Catholic Primary School. I received a very warm welcome from teachers and kids – it’s great to see that there are schools out there who take art seriously.
This week’s Illustration Friday word is SCARY.
Grab your 3D glasses to view the scary aliens below which are from The Great Bowdini’s Optical Illusions, published by Tango Books. It took a bit of research and fiddling about with the red and green channels to get the desired effect. More of the background material for this spread can be found here.
John O'Leary 
