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.
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.
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.
School year is finished and so ends another round of author/illustrator visits and workshops. I found it really rewarding to work with Creative Partnerships (now sadly gone) and with schools direct.
The life of an illustrator can often be insular, so doing school projects gives me the opportunity to get out there and meet some great people – teachers, pupils, fellow practitioners, creative agents…
Below are some of the best bits.
St Matthews Junior School, Luton Designing cardboard display cabinets/ storage boxes – year 6 project. These open up to reveal dinosaurs + eggs which were made in a previous workshop .
Pop-up instruction manuals – how to make a dinosaur – explained using words, pictures and pop ups.
St Matthews Junior School, Luton Screenprinting – three Year 6 classes developing designs and printing on t-shirts
Putney Park School
Book Box(Years 1 & 2) The idea behind this group project was a box as a book – words on the outside, pictures on the inside. Please note, the second image is during the prep stage – I try not to bring to bring large tins of Dulux paint into the classroom.
workshop round-up
Pop-up workshop with Year 3 – 6
And a giant pop-up double-page spread with reception class.The children added their drawings to an existing framework which can be opened and closed.
Richmond School, Sheerness 4 different year groups, four different pop-up devices.
Y 3
Y 4
Y 5
Y 6
Enjoy the Summer, everyone – I’m off back to the drawing board.
Eight creative practitioners descended on Lee Manor High School near Luton yesterday, courtesy of Carnival Arts Creative Partnership, ready to take on the School Charter and elicit a creative response to it from the year 7 students.
Two rappers, an artist, teacher, film maker, theatre practitioner (stage fights), author/illustrator (me) and furniture designer worked with eight classes of year 7 students – some quite lively, some even livelier – in a series of five, one hour sessions.
An end product wasn’t an essential part of the brief but, for my own part, as things were fairly chaotic at times , the choice to have one was useful in filtering and focusing on all the really good work that was being done – each student produced a piece which made up part of the greater whole. I asked them to condense sections of the charter down to a couple of words and to use graphic-style writing and imagry to convey the meaning of those words.
Over the coming days I expect some will take away their work, some will blow away in the breeze and the rest will disintegrate, ‘Arte Povera’ style.
Below are the photos – proof that it all did really happen.
One of the Creative Partnership projects I was involved in recently was in Buttsbury Juniour School in Billericay, where I was chosen (by the children, no less) to come on board for a series of literacy workshops with Royal Opera House CP.
I worked alongside poet, playwright and workshop leader, Joseph Coehlo, bringing an illustrator’s slant to the proceedings, in a series of one day workshops with the two yr 4 classes, which involved show-and-tell, pop-up creations and making books.
The idea for a collapsible cardboard toolbox came out of the planning meeting – hit the kids with a pop-up on a grand scale to prepare them for the paper engineering workshops to follow. It would also function as a container and a focal point, getting across the idea of writing and illustrating skills as tools.
The box made it’s way to the school ahead of me – so I was there in spirit before my actual arrival.
The children, when I did meet them, were an extremely enthusiastic bunch and it was so much fun to show my books and talk about my work. They also produced some brilliant pop-up books of their own. Below is some images of the work in progress.
We even managed to fit in a ‘live drawing’ session alongside Joe’s poetry and storytelling with the year 3s.
And here’s some pictures from a recent year 6 workshop at Stroud Green school, Haringey. The children were studying mountains so I set them the task of using images of famous examples to creat pop-up 3D dioramas. They were shown how to break up the images into separate layers to make foregound, middle distance and backround which we then joined together using collapsible spacers. We finished off by creating a viewing framework. I was so impressed by what they were able to do in such a short space of time.
The children’s teacher kindly supplied me with the following soundbite:
‘John facilitated a Year 6 workshop during which the children had opportunities to manipulate perspective. The results were stunning, as the children produced a series of fascinating and carefully constructed 3D models of mountain scenes. John’s approach was child-centred and engaging, supporting those children who needed extra help whilst stretching those with stronger design skills.’
It was back to school last friday when I worked with the year 5’s at Stroud Green Primary School on a stencil and screen printing project. As you can see from the photos, the kids learnt a new skill and did some brilliant work. As well as creating the banner and printing on individual pieces of material, some also choose to print on t-shirts.
The screen printing does resonate, in some ways, with what I do now, but it’s also nice to be transported back to my former life as a printer both in art college and when I first arrived here in London. Below is a couple I did earlier – 29 years earlier to be precise!
John O'Leary 
