Anorak Workshop The Drawing Imaginarium March 31st- April 2nd 2016
Thursday 31st: Set Up Day
We arrived at Yorkshire Sculpture Park at 9am having met at college to collect supplies. We then met Jenny who we had been speaking with over email for the last month so it was lovely to put a face to the name! The first thing we did was unload the car to set up our stuff. Jenny told us we would be based in the white tent, which was great. We had two tables allocated as planned, one table for the drawing station and the other for the creation station. Set up only took about an hour, we had so many materials! After we offered up our help to Jenny which we were more then happy with. I soon found myself building a flat pack greenhouse with one of my favorite illustratos, Ben Javens. Amazing! We were on site from 9-4.30 helping build and set everything up. To be honest if we hadn’t had been able to help I think it would have been a huge struggle as it was just Jenny and Ben at this point.
Thursday 31st: Set Up Day Seeing the behind the scene set up of an event of this size was eye opening. Jenny had broken down her day into a check list of tasks which she worked through, this was also handy for moments when she wasn’t there to be able to start the next tasks without waiting. We did so many different things from helping to build the structures, making bunting, erecting a paper flower installation and set dressing. And they fed us sandwhiches! Yay!
Friday 1st: Day One
Day one began with going through some final set up at the greenhouse until 10am hit and then it seemed like the workshop was full almost immediately. The workshop was packed with children, the separating of the tables was an advantage to us as it paced the workshop well, as one child was drawing another could be making and then rotate. We naturally feel into roles of helping the children with two of us per table, I feel like we had strong non-verbal communication with things like picking up on a table if it got to busy or taking over from a child to relieve each other.
We were on site from 9-4.30 helping build and set everything up. To be honest if we hadn’t had been able to help I think it would have been a huge struggle as it was just Jenny and Ben at this point.
Friday 1st: Day One This was my first workshop ever working with children. I was nervous and to be honest I thought I might get a little bored by having to go slower or break things down, but I was proven so wrong! Working with the kids was a blast, they were full of excitement and bizarre ideas which I could riff off. The best thing was the realisation that they didn’t think anything I suggested or said was silly, they were open to all imaginative possibilities and learning that fact has expanded the limitations I might have considered on my practice.
Saturday 2nd: Day Two
On Saturday we arrived to find the crew switching locations to inside the Learning Centre due to rainy weather. This threw a little curve ball but at the same time it was rather exciting to set up so quickly in a new room. We kept the format of the tables the same and the aquarium in the middle. We’d had great enthusiasm with parents taking pictures of the kids creations in the aquarium, looking forward to future workshops this interactive element is something I’d like to expand on. The day was brilliant, with a different kind of crowd then the previous day. We kept our material box full as we’d kept half our materials from the previous day, the scrap supplies did us very well!t
The Crazy Creatures!
We had some great aquatic creatures come from the workshop, as Cathy had wanted the aquarium to not just be limited to fish we really pushed this idea within our workshop. Some brilliant examples were a fish which is also a tank (see next page, top right) complete with room for ammo and a steering wheel in the head. A ‘pig-fish’ (bottom right) which we managed to find the perfect piece of industrial rubber for, and my favorite ‘octocat-fish’ (second from the left) which the maker shunned our pre-made eyes and made the smallest little cat face ever. Bonas: Look at this handmade watch left by one of the kids, brillaint!
Evaluation This was certainly the high point of my 3rd year so far. Working so closely with Anorak has been a dream as I adore the ethos and aesthetics of the magazine, it’s been an inspirational part my development as an image maker, and having made these new connections and contacts my goal is to be published in Anorak. Working with Bloop group has felt very organic, we all floated together after Matt’s briefing back in February with the same goals and excitement in mind and this has fueled our success from brainstorming ideas to getting to pitch directly to Cathy herself and to receiving such positive feedback from her throughout. I feel like everybody has pulled their weight equally and we respect each other. And the experience of working creatively with children has expanded my mind, it’s made me want to push my work into sillier and stranger places because I know they have the imaginations to go there. Overall this has been the experience which has shaped me the most this year, I found I love working together in a creative team, buzzing ideas together and getting tasks done. I feel the success of this collaboration is due to mutual excitement and enthusiasm of us all which kept us meeting up often doing a little at a time to reach our goal from researching and ordering supplies to making train trips to Pudsey to buy materials. It feels wonderful to recall how excited we all were just to pitch to Anorak let alone to do actually run the workshop. Onwards!