Children's Illustration Competition: and the Winner Is...

I was supposed to visit Nottingham last month, but a volcano in Iceland had other ideas! Fortunately I managed to email from Naples, and we rescheduled. It came back around on Monday and I hopped on the train.

It was something a bit different: I ran a series of workshops in February for Y7 classes across 5 secondary schools in the city. These were a jumping off point for longer projects, part of a big competition, which came to fruition last month. I was excited to see the results...


Originally I was to judge the competition, but we decided it wasn't logistically possible for me to do everything in a day, so the teachers chose 5 winners from each school and I just gave out the prizes. I presented each winner with a certificate and a place on a day trip to Birmingham Art Gallery next month, including a drawing workshop.


I really enjoyed looking at all the work chosen, especially as each school did something slightly different. Fernwood children wrote and illustrated their own quite extraordinary picture books, each beautifully presented and very different from one another. I was very impressed by their creativity and hard work. Above are their 5 winners.

Farnborough created these lovely and unusual self portraits in pastels and collage. As you can see, the winners were wonderfully colourful and funky. Well done to Ellie Booth, Ashley Colton, Laura Lane, Pamela Izydorek & Chelsea Sewell.


Bulwell children re-wrote and illustrated the Goldilocks story (in French no less!), each putting their own spin on the traditional tale with some great new characters. Giddy Goat even makes an appearance in one, if you look closely...

NUSA children worked in groups on comic books. The winning group wrote and illustrated a story about a Roman soldier:

Unfortunately I didn't get to see the work from the 5th school, Top Valley, as it turned out the children concerned were doing exams. They still get their prize of course (I hope the exams went well guys)!


These are the drawings I did on the way home: it was very sunny and I got a bit irritable, as you can tell from my notes above!

You can see more of the prize-winning work in the Picture Gallery later today, once I've got my act together and loaded them in.