Thank you to everyone who took part in my workshop yesterday at London Bridge Hive. Pictures show some of the brilliant work that was created.
The event was organised by Ellie Beedham at Team London Bridge for Field Lab – In a Field by a Bridge.
All last week I criss-crossed Waltham Forest to deliver workshops in pop-up design, character creation and story development to all the borough’s libraries. Many thanks to Waltham Forest Libraries and London Borough of Waltham Forest for inviting me to work with them over the half-term and to all the families who participated. The montage shows just a small selection of the wonderfully creative work that was produced.
I really enjoyed my visit to Harlowbury Primary School on Wednesday where I talked to the children about storytelling and ran workshops in pop-up book making. During my initial talk we discussed how stories from different places can enrich our lives, help us explore our similarities and differences, and teach us to respect and value each other.
Picture shows the demo I did for Y5 and Y6. After the children make a pop-up mechanism, I usually demonstrate how to translate that into a 3D illustration and how to assemble the finished book. By the end of each session, the children have enough information to complete their books. I look forward to seeing pictures of some of the finished work.
This tutorial is a special request from someone who wants to send a Covid compliant, pop-up hug to a friend. You’ll need 2 sheets of A5 light card for this, as well as glue-stick, scissors, ruler, something to draw with and craft knife…plus an adult to help with the craft knife if you’re very young. Difficulty rating, I’d say middling. On a technical note, this one uses tube post armature for the main sections and moving straps attached to the gutter or central fold for the arms.
Latest pop-up tutorial in the series.
Make a pop-up rainbow for your favourite NHS person.
Playlist:
https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PL7qyzxvZYJ3TxdCGIP_T6XYvYe0l4iqji
I’m very grateful to the schools that have invited me in over the years to talk about my work, run workshops and share my pop-up skills. I wanted to offer them something during this difficult time so I’ve been creating a series of online pop-up tutorials.
I’m currently editing video number 4. Each one deals with an aspect of paper-engineering – parallel fold, v fold, platform fold and so forth and the designs will become more complicated over time. My intention is to continue to make the videos even after everything turns back to normal – whenever that might be. Also, I’ve always wanted to provide people with a resource after they’ve done my workshops and now seemed as good a time as any to create it.
Quite rightly, no comments are allowed on the YouTube videos intended for families and kids but if you have any questions about the techniques, feel free to ask me here.
I’ll be running two half-term workshops at the Verulamium Museum (The Museum of Everyday Life in Roman Britain) in St. Albans next month. Verulamium was the third largest city of Roman Britain and the museum stands on the site of the Roman town.
Both workshops are based around the theme of the Roman kitchen, allowing plenty of scope for food, implements, vessels, tools, pets and other rooms in the background. Workshop 1 will consist of making simple individual pop-up frameworks and adding the various elements to build up a 3D picture.
Workshop 2 (free) is a drop-in session where you get to help co-create a giant work of three dimensional art! The children will create and add the elements to a large pre-prepared, collapsible, cardboard framework, using the museum’s exhibits for inspiration. The finished piece will be displayed at the museum for a short period of time.
Further information about the workshops and the museum:
http://www.stalbansmuseums.org.uk/whats-on/roman-paper-engineering-bookable-session-457/
http://www.stalbansmuseums.org.uk/whats-on/roman-paper-engineering-drop-in-session-458/
Below are some examples of the great work produced by the kids at my workshop at the Verulamium Museum, St Albans yesterday.
The workshop was linked to a bigger project, All In It Together, run St Albans Arts Team, with the aim of exploring ideas of propaganda versus reality with particular reference to World War 1 – a lot of the posters were produced at the time by St Albans based printers Dangerfields at the time.
The children created swing cards with pop-up elements which showed transformation from slogan-based designs to depictions of destroyed landscapes inspired by the work of Paul Nash. Some wanted to depict other wars – WW2, the Blitz, evacuation – creating narratives around stories they heard from grandparents, parents or school.
Back from Budapest where I spent time working with the kids and staff at the British International School. I was helped by the school’s wonderful librarian who acted as my wing-woman for the entire 3 days and made sure everything ran to schedule.
After my initial school talk, I ran a series of workshops with all classes where I showed the children how to make their own pop-up books.
A pattern for the sessions emerged fairly early on when I matched each class to a mechanism, guiding them through the process so they all had a completed pop-up framework ready to go. Following a discussion about their storyboard ideas – the blank storyboards were sent ahead of my arrival – I used some of their material to demonstrate how to convert mechanism into fully illustrated 3D scene. Some of the images show these, others show the children’s work-in-progress.
The school places huge importance on reading and runs several initiatives to encourage the love of books. At a certain point each day, everyone drops everything to read for five minutes. The doors were also being decorated as book covers while I was there – check out the Detective Paws ‘door cover’.
John O'Leary 