A crazy few days have taken me first to Cheltenham, for a magical Ella Bella concert at the Music festival (you can read about that on my
Ella Bella site by CLICKING HERE) and then to London for the very first - and completely triumphant - Pop Up Festival. This is the brainchild of Dylan Calder, and it's undoubtedly the best children's book festival I've ever seen. Not that I saw that much... as the main Festival was in the lovely, hidden gardens of Coram's Fields, near King's Cross. I was just across the road at the Brunswick Centre, behind the Renoir Cinema.
And there, on a stage in broad daylight the giant pop up book made a few weeks ago
(see here) was put up and children came in waves to grab outsized pens and fill it with pictures and colours and stories. We had dragons and princesses and castles and witches and a number of maurauding black panthers courtesy of Raphael, whose father runs the
Splats Theatre Company (and who is creating the theatre version of Katie's Picture Show). Yes the whole thing was deliciously mad, and the turning of the pages and the revealing of the pop ups never failed to bring gasps of delight from the children.
It was lovely to see so many friends, and some of my own old students from Cambridge Art School (Children's Book MA) as well (and yes, I made them add their own talents to the project! The book contains original pieces by
Nicola Killen,
Susannah Moores,
Emma Symons' children (!), and
Patrick Kennedy (and son).
The best bit? seeing children sitting contentedly INSIDE a giant book, crawling through the pages, and through the cut out doorway, brandishing pens and losing themselves in concentrated effort. Some spent hours lost in a reverie of their own creation. And when it was done it was taken to Coram's Fields and set outside the bookshop tent, where it became a tunnel, a slide, a climbing frame, a spur to storytelling... and of course what it was always supposed to be: a giant pop up book for a giant pop up festival!
