Author Visits to Schools: Writing Workshops.

This week I am back in the studio, trying to get my Swap! artwork finished. Last week I didn't move things forward much, as I was doing educational events, including 2 events for Sheffield's Off The Shelf festival and 2 more days of my new 'writing stories through illustration' workshop.

The writing workshops were at Ambleside Primary School in Nottingham. I had a full day with each set of children. The whole class worked together first, with me at the flipchart, demonstrating how you could use drawing (which the children mostly find quite easy) to generate unusual but cohesive narratives (which they often don't). 

I then helped the children to create their own A3 illustrations, which they used to create storylines, first standing up to tell the story orally, then writing some of it down. 

They had some great (and often rather surreal) ideas... 

One story began at sea: a kitten fell overboard off a ship, floating alone in his basket until rescued from drowning by a snake, who dragged the kitten to a tiny desert island. But the snake just wanted to eat him: it was all for the best, he said, as it would stop him missing his mum any more. Luckily for the kitten, an angel came to his aid in the nick of time, flapping her wings to waft sand up into the snake's eyes so she and the kitten could escape.

See what I mean? 

In case you are wondering, these drawings are of course unrelated to the workshops, but are the sketches I did on the train to and from Nottingham. Hope you like them!

You can see more of my train sketchbooks on my website and read about some of my other school workshops here. If you would be interested in a school visit, just drop me an email.