Planning My New Exhibition

On Tuesday I had a visitor to the studio: Amy Goodwin, curator of Salford Art Gallery, came to talk about my exhibition next year.

Do you remember the exhibition in Tameside?

Well, we always hoped it would tour but, with times as they are, it's taken a while. Everything has been tucked away in bubble-wrap since this time last year. Now though, it's being dusted off and spruced up, with new work and lots of additional ideas to bring it bang up to date.

We will be keeping the best of the children's activities, like Stinky and his stick-on flies...

...the monkey's tea party...


...and the child-swallowing anaconda from Class Two at the Zoo:


But it's a much bigger space this time, and Salford have their own budget, so we will be building new things too.

There will be a more substantial drawing / writing area and we might well mock up a big version of the story-making machine from my website:

Amy had a great idea for hand-painting a massive dinosaur mural on one wall, and building a big, hinged, wooden flap, to mock-up one of the dinos from my flap-books Gnash Gnaw Dinosaur! and Rumble, Roar, Dinosaur!

We are also going to re-visit the ark idea that didn't happen last time too, and this time we have the space to build it BIG so it will be the centre of the show!!!

We want to make the exhibition appropriate for adults as well as families though, so are looking at including films about the background to the work, as well as keeping lots of info boards and handouts about working in children's publishing.

The dates are now finalised: an even longer run than previously, from 16th July until 6th November. There will be workshop and storytelling events in local libraries during the run, and I am even thinking of planning a sketchcrawl in the area, possibly to coincide with next year's Big Draw. Can't wait to get stuck in.