Categories: uncategorized
Date: 23 September 2005 09:29:01
wow, yesterday was busy... son boy woke up at 6 (a blessing in ways, 4 am starts was getting draining although for the past week or so it's been closer to 6 which is good) kids off to school, straight into town. sign language lesson from 10 to 12, straight up to the Tourist Information Centre to grab a dozen or so Guildford Book Festival brochures to give out on my travels. straight home to repack bags, couple of quick book related phone calls (to Papershed and George Longland at GBC hi George :) ) and then onto a bus again. One long meeting at Knaphill for future direction of Youth arts project and meeting one of the long standing workers there and then straight to a level 2 training course for youthwork which I managed to keep brain ticking over through and found a couple of times to draw comittee led pictures that I truly hope are never seen again by anyone.... Home at half ten, today... a little bleary shall we say.
Wifey wants me to dig the allotment for two and a half hours.
Big sigh.
ok.. Ought else? should I say more about the Guildford Book Festival thing? Think I shall have ten minutes to spend so here we go:
have worked for Guildford Borough Council for a number of years doing summer school/easter school work, primarily art based but did do a year of one to one with autistic kids... They passed my details on to Guildford Book Festival (who I'd been trying to contact concerning Dr Sylver 2 anyhow) who asked me to pitch ideas for the opening day, which they wanted to combine in some way with the Big Draw event.. .
At this point I would mention that I would add links to these words if I could, but I have no idea how... (anyone? Bueller? Lowry? etc?) Links to follow anyhow.
So I pitched an idea, on a small scale, making mini books out of shrink plastic (scroll waaaay below for previous examples of S P art...) That was agreed to be cool, but not necessarily in keeping with the idea of a drop in art event.
Instead we went for what has become The Guildford Big Book Draw... set in the Discovery Centre (now the Guildford Centre for Young People but people still call it by its old name) we're getting in all sorts of art stuff for people to play with. The intention is to start with a front page and an end page. The Dragon has written a book for his Princess. She loves it so much she wants to take it to the Book Festival to be read to her friends. He shyly and reluctantly agrees. That's page 1. The last page is the Princess reading the story to the assembled audience and they all love it very much indeed, the end. The middle pages (and indeed the cover) are for the visitors to come up with. We'll have large hardboard panels, painted various colours, for them to montage, paint, pencil, pop up and all sorts on, all within the theme but that's the only rule. At the end of the day (and at 10am - 4 pm on Saturday October the 15th it's somewhat of a long day, I shall be pooped at the end of it) we'll have the biggest book of the book festival.
Support so far has come from (and not in order of importance, just in the way the letters fall away from the keyboard) Guildford Art Centre (yay! best art shop in the world bar none), Hit Entertainment, A DIY chain (tbc), Templar Books, Rolf Harris (can't be there sadly, sending signed stuff for the competition), Jan Pienkowski (ditto the rolf comment), Tony Hart (ditto the previous two comments) and..... have I forgotten anyone? Possibly. Trying to think honest, but between this, the lantern festival, the youth arts stuff, rewrites and the like my mind is mush. Guildford College have promised students to help, a couple of lovely local artists will be there (I'll be there of course, but I assume that my time will be spent more on the youthwork side rather than the art side) and.. Well, that will be a blog update will it not.... Then, once that has drained 90% of the energies from my poor lil bod I'll be leading 5 sessions of doing mini books with kids, teens and the rest. Roll on November. But not too quick please. There is more to say about the Big Draw, in terms of tbc's, but we'll see when we get there.
Also of note at the book festival will be Rob Lacey doing a Street Bible thing at St Saviours church, a deaf poetry day, Gerald Scarfe on art and others... Checl out the website (link below). I didn't do the website, in case any of you are going to moan about the lack of loading bar/base homepage and the like...
Anything else? Think something's going in the next issue of Purpose comic, which'll be nice, details as they arrive... Sylver 2 on course for Feb 17, hoping to do a sampler for the book festival if we can get there... We'll see. Um... um and um indeed. Anyhow, so busy I feel as if my head is the middle ball in a Newton's cradle. Hopefully I'll make it through all of this.
Linkies:
http://www.guildfordbookfestival.co.uk/
http://www.thebigdraw.org.uk/
http://www.drawingpower.org.uk/menu2.htm
and (ahem) http://www.kercal.co.uk for news, views and a lack of updates...
Currently listening to: Alison Moyet: Essex.Current socks being worn: Douglas the Lurpak mascot socks. Currently playing: Zoo Keeper (NDS). There's a huge essay or masochistic game design there I can tell you.