Podcast appearances and mentions of Quentin Blake

As the Quentin Blake Centre for Illustration prepares to open in London, we find out how illustrators are adapting to a changing world.Starting with a rare interview from Quentin Blake, we'll hear how this once undervalued side of the visual arts still creates the defining images of childhoods, whilst also now playing a central role in the visual language of the internet. Featuring voices working across illustration, including Posy Simmonds, Chris Riddell, Michael Rosen, Christoph Niemann, Lizzy Stewart, Benji Davies, Murugiah, Chie Kutsuwada and Jane Rosenberg and Olivia Ahmad. The Quentin Blake Centre for Illustration opens 5th June. Presenter: Tom Sutcliffe Producer: Harry Graham

In this episode of The Growing Readers Podcast, host Bianca Schulze welcomes back New York Times bestselling author Andy Griffiths and, for the very first time on the podcast, illustrator Bill Hope, to talk about their wildly fun, reader-inside-the-story series, You and Me.Andy shares how fan mail from kids asking to be put inside the Treehouse books planted the seed for an entirely new kind of adventure—one where the reader is always the co-star. Bill reveals what it felt like to get the secretive call from the publisher, how he solved the puzzle of illustrating characters with no visible identity, and why he still considers his work a long, joyful attempt to scratch the same itch sparked by a Quentin Blake how-to-draw book at age ten. Together, they pull back the curtain on a creative partnership built on high-pressure play, a very low boredom threshold, and Bill's ongoing mission to sneak a human being into at least one illustration.Whether you're a parent looking for books that work at bedtime for every age in the room, a teacher wanting highly illustrated adventures that do the heavy lifting so young readers can focus on the fun, or a kid who has ever wondered what it would be like to jump into a story yourself — this episode is a joyful celebration of two books that prove the silliest ideas are worth working very, very hard on.Read the transcript on The Children's Book Review (coming soon).Highlights:The Fan Mail That Started It All: How letters from kids asking to be put inside the Treehouse books gave Andy the idea for an entirely new seriesHigh-Pressure Play: What it felt like for Bill to audition for the biggest job of his career — and why Andy and Jill's secret weapon is a very low boredom thresholdThe Cardboard Box Solution: How Bill solved the puzzle of illustrating two characters with no visible identity—and why first-person perspective alone was never going to workJohnny Knucklehead Was Supposed to Be a Side Character: How a fifth sketch became the series' most beloved agent of chaos—and why he keeps getting bigger with every bookThemes That Emerge from the Fun: Why the quiet life lessons in both books weren't planted there, they grewPity the Reader: Andy on Kurt Vonnegut's guiding principle and why every creative decision comes back to making reading as pleasurable as possibleNotable Quote:"There's no wrong answers, no jokes that are too silly. You sort of put a lot of stuff out there — it's a long period of me just pitching dumb stuff at Andy and seeing what sticks." — Bill HopeBooks Mentioned:You and Me and the Land of Lost Things by Andy Griffiths and Bill Hope: ⁠Amazon⁠ or ⁠Bookshop.org⁠You and Me and the Peanut Butter Beast by Andy Griffiths and Bill Hope: ⁠Amazon⁠ or ⁠Bookshop.org⁠101 Books to Read Before You Grow Up (Revised Edition) by Bianca Schulze: Amazon⁠⁠ or ⁠⁠Bookshop.org⁠⁠About Andy Griffiths: New York Times bestselling author of The Day My Butt Went Psycho!, the Treehouse series, and many more. Named the Australian Children's Book Laureate. Ambassador for the Indigenous Literacy Project. Visit: andygriffiths.com.auAbout Bill Hope: Artist and illustrator living in the Blue Mountains, Sydney. His graphic novel An Interior Life won the Golden Ledger award for Australian Comics. Visit: billhope.com.auCredits: Host: Bianca Schulze | Guests: Andy Griffiths and Bill Hope | Audio Editor: Kelly Rink | Producer: Bianca Schulze

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Pre-order Drawing is Important — http://tomfroese.com/bookIn this episode, I take on the "myth of artistic looseness." We often envy the "spontaneous" energy of artists like Quentin Blake, but the truth is that looking effortless requires a tone of effort. I dive into why your final illustrations feel "stiff" compared to your sketches and how to bridge that gap through what I call supervised spontaneity and confidence from competence. IN THIS EPISODE • Three observations about artistic looseness • How to build "chaos" into a repeatable process.  • The Take-Two-ness of Glenn Gould: Why the best work happens in the studio, not live.  • Why even pros like Sir Quentin Blake struggle with achieving looseness. • The Exercise: A three-stage drawing challenge to help you unlock creative freedom in your drawings.EPISODE LINKS • Quentin Blake shares about his artistic neurosis in "How I draw" — https://quentinblake.com/about-drawing/how-i-draw • Glenn Gould Poster (Tom Froese, for Polaris Prize) — https://www.tomfroese.com/work/polaris-music-prize-glenn-gould • Glenn Gould's "Take-Two-Ness" — https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/BachTheGoldberg_Variations_(Glenn_Gould_album)HOW TO SUPPORTYou can support Thoughts on Illustration by: • Sharing this episode with a friend • Leaving a comment • Leaving a rating or review on Apple Podcasts • Following the show / subscribing to this channel • Becoming a paid supporter here or on Patreon — ⁠https://patreon.com/tomfroese⁠FIND ME ELSEWHERE • Website — https://www.tomfroese.com • Instagram — https://www.instagram.com/mrtomfroese • Daily Drawings — https://www.instagram.com/drawingisimportantCREDITSMusic and cues by Mark Allan Falk — https://linktr.ee/semiathleticDRAWING IS IMPORTANT — NOW AVAILABLE FOR PRE-ORDERMy new book, Drawing Is Important, is your guide to making drawing a meaningful daily habit. Through stories, insights, and exercises, it helps you draw more often—with less pressure and more joy. Available 7 April 2026 — Pre-order now! The first 500 orders get a free hand-signed book plate! Look for "get pre-order prizes" after clicking the link.Pre-order Drawing is Important — http://tomfroese.com/book

Waarin Jochen (zonder Yarne helaas) langsgaat in het Huis van Harry, bij 's lands meest bekroonde kinderboekenmaker. Leo Timmers stapt met ons mee op een meanderende tijdreis naar zijn debuut 'Blij met mij'. Al is een beginpunt niet zo heel makkelijk te kiezen. In dit fijne gesprek hebben we het onder andere over nooit opgeven ondanks alle twijfel, over zelf de teugels in handen durven (en kunnen) nemen, over de veelzijdigheid van acryl, over jezelf uitdagen en de geweldige Quentin Blake. Dank aan Gina en Leo én de echte Harry de poes (die eigenlijk Billy heet) voor de warme ontvangst.

Angela Harding is an artist, printmaker and illustrator. Based in Rutland, Angela's work is inspired by the countryside of the British Isles, and in particular British birds. Alongside her many prints and artistic creations, her award-willing illustrations can be found adorning many a book cover.Angela was born in Stoke-on-Trent in June 1960, the middle of three daughters to Stephen and Joan Harding. It was an artistic household: her father, a headteacher, passed on his love of poetry to Angela, her mother taught pottery, and all three sisters would end up going to art college. She left school at sixteen and, at her mother's behest, did a pre-nursing course before pursuing her passion for art. She studied Fine Art at Leicester Polytechnic from where she graduated with a first in 1982. After indulging her love of travel – both on her bike around Britain as well as on a Magic Bus across Europe – Angela spent twenty years working in the art world, from teaching to consultancy. During these years, she married and raised two children, then divorced and married her second husband, Mark.In 2008, she made the life changing decision to pursue a career as a professional artist: she abandoned the media she had previously worked in and concentrated on linocuts and silkscreen printing. She has worked as a magazine illustrator and today her prints can be found on everything from book covers to tea towels and greeting cards. Her advent calendars – first produced in 2015 – have become a collector's item. She has also published several books of her own.When she's not on her boat sailing around the British Isles, Angela lives in Rutland, with her husband Mark and her whippet, Oaty. DISC ONE: I Wanna Thank Ya (featuring Snoop Dogg) - Angie Stone DISC TWO: The Thought Fox. Written and read by Ted Hughes DISC THREE: Britten: Songs from "Friday Afternoons", Op. 7: Songs From Friday Afternoons, Op. 7: "Cuckoo!". Performed by Choir of Downside School, Purley, Viola Tunnard (piano), Benjamin Britten (conductor) DISC FOUR: Rise - Public Image Ltd. DISC FIVE: My Lady Story - Anohni and the Johnsons DISC SIX: La conga blicoti - Joséphine Baker DISC SEVEN: Skeleton Tree - LYR DISC EIGHT: Marie douceur - Marie colère - Marie Laforêt BOOK CHOICE: Complete Poetical Works and Letters of Edward Thomas LUXURY ITEM: A lino printing set with champagne CASTAWAY'S FAVOURITE: I Wanna Thank Ya (featuring Snoop Dogg) - Angie Stone Presenter Lauren Laverne Producer Sarah TaylorThere are more than 2000 programmes in our archive available for you to listen to. We have cast away other notable artists including Helen Oxenbury, Maggie Hambling and Quentin Blake. You'll also find the Poet Laureate, Simon Armitage in our archive too. You can find their episodes on BBC Sounds or on our Desert Island Discs website.

Mike and Duncan catch up over some indie Macallan's whilst discussing the Macbeth Whisky Series. A concept project based on the namesake Shakespeare play, and a combination of brilliance organised by Lexi Burgess, including: Quentin Blake, Sukhinder Singh, Oliver Chilton, and Dave Broom... quite the team up!Plus, some chat for Guinness fans, as the (now Tik Tok) legendary Devonshire Pub in London, is discussed.You can ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠buy us a dram⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠ which will make us very happy, and we will shout you out. Check out the Honest to a Malt ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠podcast website⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠ & blog. Browse the ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠Whisky T-Shirt Shop⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠. Email us on: HonestToAMalt@protonmail.com

Today, we take a deep dive into Switch Bitch — Roald Dahl's surprisingly adult collection of short stories — while Pete grapples with his confusion, and slight heartbreak, over why Quentin Blake didn't stay loyal to Roald.Elsewhere, Pete explores the bizarre world of pay-to-shoplift experiences in Japan, sparking a debate on whether fake theft really scratches the same itch. Plus, the lads weigh in on the Angel Boys' return to social media.Email us at hello@lukeandpeteshow.com or you can get in touch on X, Threads or Instagram if character-restricted messaging takes your fancy.***Please take the time to rate and review us on Apple, Spotify or wherever you get your pods. It means a great deal to the show and will make it easier for other potential listeners to find us. Thanks!*** Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Åsa Warnqvist, litteratursociolog och chef på Barnboksinstitutet, presenterar två män omgivna av en dammig air av bildning, språkintresse och tweed: radiotjänstemannen och akademikern Nils-Olof Franzén och redaktören för Byköpings-posten, herr Agaton Sax - två veritabla renässansmänniskor. Quentin Blake nämns. Lyssna på alla avsnitt i Sveriges Radio Play.

In this episode of the Potloodcast Floortje Smit is interviewing Olivia Ahmad, the artistic director of The Quentin Blake Centre for Illustration in London. Ahmad studied illustration at the Cambridge School of Art. Instead of pursuing a career as an illustrator, she became interested in curating. After completing a master's degree in museum studies, she became the artistic director of the House of Illustration in London. The center was set up by the well-known illustrator Quentin Blake around 20 years ago. He wanted to raise awareness and recognition for the art of illustration.The selected images you can find here:https://www.illustratieambassade.nl/potloodcast-potloodcast-25-olivia-ahmad/

Skip the Queue is brought to you by Rubber Cheese, a digital agency that builds remarkable systems and websites for attractions that helps them increase their visitor numbers. Your host is Paul Marden, CEO of Rubber Cheese.Fill in the Rubber Cheese 2024 Visitor Attraction Website Survey - the annual benchmark statistics for the attractions sector.If you like what you hear, you can subscribe on iTunes, Spotify, and all the usual channels by searching Skip the Queue or visit our website rubbercheese.com/podcast.If you've enjoyed this podcast, please leave us a five star review, it really helps others find us. And remember to follow us on Twitter for your chance to win the books that have been mentioned in this podcast.Competition ends on 3rd July 2024. The winner will be contacted via Twitter. Show references:Lego House in BillundSutton Hoo (National Trust)Sutton Hoo at the British MuseumThe Dig on NetflixSutton Hoo mask on Lego IdeasThe Dig: Lego version of Sutton Hoo treasure 'amazing' (BBC News)Events at The Hold IpswitchAndrew Webb is a LEGO enthusiast who uses bricks in outreach programmes for teams and organisations as diverse at Arm, Pinset Mason, The National Trust, English Heritage, and the Scouts. During the UK's second Lockdown in early 2021, He made the 1500 year old Sutton Hoo Helmet out of LEGO bricks and submitted it to LEGO Ideas. The build achieved international media coverage, and has since been donated to the National Trust. Andrew continues to help attractions and institutions with LEGO programmes. By day, he works as a global head of content marketing for a B2B tech company. Find out more at http://teambuildingwithbricks.com Transcription:  Paul Marden: Welcome to Skip the Queue, a podcast for people working in and working with Mister attractions. I'm your host, Paul Marden. Today I'm talking to Andrew Webb. By day, Andrew is a content marketer for a tech firm, but in his spare time helps attractions to use Lego as a tool to attract and engage diverse audiences and enable them to interpret history and culture. We're going to talk about what it means to be an building, a model of anglo saxon helmet, and the 24 skills that are used when building with Lego. Paul Marden: So welcome to the podcast. Andrew Webb: Thank you. Paul Marden: On Skip the Queue, we always start with some icebreaker questions that you know nothing about. So let's launch into a couple of those. Book and a pool or museums and galleries for your city break. Andrew Webb: Museum and galleries.Paul Marden: Yeah. I'd expect nothing less given what we're about to talk about. This is one from one of my colleagues, actually, who is really good at icebreakers whenever we do a team building eventually. So he said, “Would you rather have it and lose it or never have it at all?”Andrew Webb: Oh, gosh, I'll have it and lose it for sure. Paul Marden: Yeah, gotta be. That one's from miles. Say thank you, Myles. That was a cracker. Andrew Webb: Do you remember the word there was a great one. Would you rather eat ten donuts or raw onion? Paul Marden: Oh, ten donuts, hand down. I could easily do that. Andrew Webb: I'd get onion. I'd get onion. Every time I would take an onion over ten donuts. I'd be sick after ten donuts. Paul Marden: Oh, no, I reckon I could take that. No problem. Andrew Webb: Okay. Paul Marden: Okay. So we're going to talk a little bit about your adventures in Lego over the last few years. So why don't we kick off and talk a little bit about your original interest in Lego? Because I know it goes back not a long way, because that would be rude. But it goes back to a few years ago, doesn't it? Andrew Webb: It does. I mean, like most people growing up in what we might loosely term the west, I had like, I was a kid, you know, I think most of us grew up with it like that. And then like, you know, growing up in that first age of plastics with Heman, Transformers, Lego, Star wars, all of that sort of stuff. Paul Marden: You're just describing my childhood. Andrew Webb: It's funny because that was. It was all sort of ephemeral, right? I mean, the idea was that the reason why that boom happened, just to dwell on why they're going plastic things. Before that, toys were made out of either tin or wood. So, you know, they were very labour intensive produce there's certainly injection moulding comes along and we could just have anything coupled with the tv shows and the films and all this sort of stuff. So we all grew up in this sort of first age of disposable plastic, and then it all just gets passed down as kids grow up. It gets given away, gets put in the loft and forgotten about. There's a moment when a return of the Jedi bedspread doesn't look cool anymore, right? You hit about 13, 14 and you're like, “Mom, I really want some regular stuff there.”Andrew Webb: So like everybody, you know, I gave it all away, sold it and whatever, but I kept onto my lego and then fast forward, you know, I become a parent and Lego starts to come back into my life. So I'm sort of at a stage where I'm working for a travel startup and I get a press release to go to the Lego House, which if no one has heard about it, where have you been? But also it is a fantastic home of the brick, which Lego built in, opened in 2016. And it is a phenomenal temple to Lego. Not in terms of like a Legoland style approach with rides and things like that, but it's all about the brick and activities that you can do in a brick. Andrew Webb: There is great pools and huge pits of Lego to play with there, as well as displays and all this sort of stuff. They've actually got a Lego duplo waterfall.Paul Marden: Really? Andrew Webb:  Oh, I mean, it's a fantastic attraction. And the way they've done it is just incredible. So they blend a lot of digital things. So if you make a small fish and insert it into this thing, it appears in the tank and swims around and this sort of stuff and the way you can imprint your designs on things. I should just quickly tell you about the cafeteria there as well, just really quickly. So the cafeteria at the Lego House, everyone gets a little bag of Lego and then whatever you build and insert into this sort of iPad sort of slots type thing, and that's what you're. Andrew Webb: So a pink brick might be salmon, a yellow brick might be chicken, whatever, and you put it all in and it recognises it all and then it comes down a giant conveyor belt in a Lego. Giant Lego box and is handed to you by robots. I mean, mind blowing stuff. This is not like with a tray at the National Trust place or somewhere like that for us to come. It is a technological marvel. Absolutely fascinating. So, of course, on the day went, it was a press preview, so there was no canteen workers, so there was no food in the box when me and my daughter, so went without that data, was a bit disappointed. Andrew Webb: But that started that whole reappreciation of Lego, both as a toy to play with my daughter, but also as a way of using Lego in different ways. And that manifests itself in lots of different things. So currently, now, you know, fast forward a little bit. I use Lego for team building exercises, for workshops, for problem solving with organisations, and also just for having fun with adult groups as well as kids. And I think one of the biggest things we've seen since this kind of started around 2000s with the sort of adults reading Harry Potter, do you remember that was like, why are you reading this children's book type of thing? Paul Marden: Yeah. Andrew Webb: And then all the prequel Star wars films came out and Lego made sets about both those two things. And it kind of. I mean, Bionicle saved the company, as only AFOL will know, but it started that whole merchandising thing and adding Lego into that firmament of IP. Right. And we fast forward now, and it's Marvel and Star wars and everything. Paul Marden: You just said AFOL. I know what an AFOL is, but many of our listeners may not know what AFOL is.Andrew Webb: Just to go for acronyms here. So an AFOL is an Adult Fan of Lego. And we've seen actually Lego in the past five years, even earlier. I mean, Lego always had an adult element to it. And one of the original founders used to use it for designing his own house. And there was a whole architectural system called Molodux. So it's always had that element to it. But just recently we've seen, you know, almost retro sets. So we see the Lego Atari 2600 video game system from 1976, which, yeah. Paul Marden: An original NES wasn't there. Andrew Webb: Exactly. NES that's come out. I've got a Lego Optimus prime back here for transformers, you know, all that kind of stuff. So with what's been really interesting is this kidault or whatever, however, call it. And I think that's really fascinating, because if we think about Lego as a toy, we are rapidly approaching the age where we might have three generations of people that have grown up with Lego. Lego first came around in the very late ‘60s, early '70s. And so it's not inconceivable that you might have three generations that had Lego as a child, especially if you grew up in Denmark. A little bit different when it would come to the rest of Europe as they expanded out. So I get to this point, and I'm getting into Lego and doing all this sort of stuff. Andrew Webb: And then, of course, COVID happens and then lockdown happens and we all think the world's going to end and no one knows. Everyone's looking for hobbies, aren't they? They say you were either hunk, drunk or chunk after lockdown. You either got fit, got fat or got alcoholic. So try to avoid those three things. And, you know, everyone's looking for stuff to do, so you have so much banana bread you can bake. And so I stupidly, with my daughter's help, decided to make the Lego Sutton Hoo helmet, the 1500 year old Sutton Hoo helmet found at Sutton Hoo in Suffolk, now in the British Museum. Out of Lego, as you do. Paul Marden: I mean, just exactly. Just as you do. So just a slight segue. I was at the National Attractions Marketing Conference yesterday and there were two people presenting who both talked about their experiences of wacky things that they did during lockdown. There was one person that opened a theatre in her back garden and had various different stars just randomly turn up in her backyard up in North Yorkshire. And you choose to build a Lego Sutton Hoo helmet.Andrew Webb: Lockdown, there will be a time, I think, as we look back, tragic though it was, and, you know, a lot of people died, but it was that moment when society sort of shuffled around a bit and people sort of thought, “Well, if I don't do it now, why not?” People were launching bakeries in their kitchens and serving their community and like. And that element of it. And so people have that. The good side of that, I suppose, is that people did find new outlets of creativity. And Joe Wick's yoga class is in their front row walking groups, you know, all this sort of stuff and beating beaten horsemans and learning to play the violin and dust and stuff. Suddenly we all had to find hobbies because we're all just in. Andrew Webb: No one was going to restaurants, no one's going to bars, no one's going to gigs, nightclubs, theatres. We like to make entertainment at home. It was like the middle ages. So I decided to build the Lego Sutton Hoo helmet, as you do. And so I start this in lockdown, and then, like, I get wind that Netflix is making a film called The Dig. And The Dig is all about, I think it's Lily James and Ray Fiennes in it, and it's all those other people. And it's all about when they found theSutton Hoo helmet. And the guy who found it was called Basil Brown, and he was asked by Edith Pretty, who owned the land, to excavate these humps in the ground that were on her estate. Paul Marden: Okay, so she owns this big estate, in Suffolk, right? And, so she can clearly see there's burial mounds in the back garden, but doesn't know what's in them. Doesn't have any clue that there's treasure locked up inside this. Andrew Webb: I'm not even sure she knew there were anglo saxon burial maps since it was. Paul Marden: They were just lumps of ground in the garden. Andrew Webb: Yeah. I mean, she may have had inkling and other stuff I've turned up over the years and whatever. And some of them were robbed sort of georgian times around then. So some people knew what they were and they were somewhere excavated and gold was taken to fund the polynomial wars and whatnot. But she asked Basil Branson, he was like an amateur archaeologist, right? And so he was just like this local guy would cycle over and do. And the film goes into all that, and the film kind of portrays it as working class. Basil Brown should know his place against the sort of British Museum who are sort of the baddies in this film who think they know what. And of course, this is all set against the backdrop of war. So they escalated it all, then they had to rebury it. Andrew Webb: And then it was used as a tank training ground, so lots of tanks rolled over it. So it's a miracle anything was ever found. But when he did find the Sutton Hoo, who told me and a bunch of other things, clasp brooches, shields, weapons and whatever, when he did find it, so people think it kind of popped out the ground as a helmet, but it didn't. And if you look at the photos, it came out the ground in hundreds of pieces. Paul Marden: Oh, really? So you look at this reconstructed mask that's now in the British Museum, and you think, “Oh, so they just found that in one piece,” lifted out as if it was a Lego hat, you know, for a minifig. In one piece? No, not at all. Andrew Webb: It was actually more like a big parlour Lego in the fact that it was just in hundreds of thousands of pieces. And so there was the first guy to have a go at it was an elderly architect at the British Museum who was, I think, blind in one eye. And he had a go at putting it all together. And he used an armature and clay and pins and whatever, put it all together and said, “Yes, I think it was this.” And then actually it wasn't. He got it all wrong. Lots of different pieces after some more research, and then it falls to this. Nigel Williams is another sub architect, and he was famous for. Andrew Webb: There was a famous Portland vase that was broken in a museum by someone pushing it over as a sort of what you might call, like a just stop oil type of protest now, I can't remember what the call was, but someone smashed an exhibit. And he had painstakingly pieced all this together. He was a total dapper dude. Three piece suit, Chelsea boots, proper swinging sixties, and he had to go and put it all together. His version is the one that's in the British Museum, but he was a massive jigsaw fan. And if you think about Lego, what it is a 3d jigsaw. You get a bunch of pieces and you have to make. Make it into a 3d sculpture. So that was one reason, the dig was the other reason. Andrew Webb: The third reason was that the relationship between East Anglia and essentially Denmark and Billand and Anglo Saxon and Jutland and all that area, I'm talking like Vikings and Anglo Saxons and invasions and all this kind of stuff against the native British, there is essentially a relationship between East Anglia, a trade relationship and a conquest relationship between them. So I built this thing and I frantically put it together and I'm late nights and just losing my marbles trying to get this thing to work. Because Lego is not designed to make, like, spherical shapes, necessarily. It's quite blocky. Right. Everyone knows this. It's the square. Paul Marden: Really easy to make a car, really easy to make a house. A spaceship. Andrew Webb: Houses. Brilliant. Yeah. Square stuff is fantastic. But baking, not only a sort of a semicircle, but a hemisphere, which is what essentially a helmet is. Is even harder because you have to get the Lego to bend in two directions. And so a lot of work went into that just to get the actual face piece came together quite easy. And there was once I had the scale of the pieces under the eyes that formed that sort of thing, and then I could build the nose and face. Ideally, it was going to be so that I could put it on my head. I've actually got a massive head. So in the end, I had to realign that and sort of make it into this sort of child sized head. Paul Marden: But it's a wearable thing, right? Andrew Webb: It is. It is wearable. I mean, at one point, it was probably more fragile than the one in the British Museum because it just kept dropping to pieces. So there's a lot of sub plates that are holding together the outer plate. So it's actually sort of. So just quick Lego terminology here. So bricks, obviously are bricks. The flat things with bubbles on are called plates and then the smoother ones are called tiles. Okay. And used a combination of these to create. There's also a technique called SNOT, which stands for Studs Not On Top. We love acronyms in the Lego community. Right? Paul Marden: Completely.Andrew Webb:  So if you say, “Oh, man, I'm an AFOL covered in SNOT,” people know what you want to know what you mean. So after a night in the tiles, I got covered. Yeah. Andrew Webb: Anyway, so I make the helmet, I make the thing, and then, you know, I get a lot of support from the National Trust, specifically East of England National Trust and Sutton, who site itself because it's there. It's their crown jewels. The British Museum, not so much, because they was like, we've got a billion exhibits here. No, it's just one of them. When you've got the Tippecar moon and the Rosetta stone, it kind of pales into significant. But actually, they were helpful. And one of the curators there, who was on Twitter, who sent me a link to some 3d photos, because if you. If you google it's all pictures at the front. That's fantastic. But what does the back look like? Paul Marden: Oh, right, okay. Andrew Webb: So actually, buried deep in the British Museum's website, in their research department, under a filing cabinet, in the back of a server somewhere, are some quite technical photographic images of it, turning every sort of 30 degrees so that. That it's documented as to what it looks. Because you got to remember that everything on the helmet is symbolic of various different things. There is symbols that mean there's a guy on a horse who's sort of fighting and all this sort of stuff. And it all has quite a lot of meaning. I can occur from different parts of history as well. So there's some sort of roman influencing things there and symbols. And so this whole thing is designed to be not only a battle helmet, but it is also because, remember, crowns haven't been invented yet. Crowns are a later mediaeval sort of invention. Andrew Webb: So this is both a symbol of authority, headwear, like a crown, but also a weapon or a piece of defensive armour and equipment. So it has several functions in its life. So it's quite a complex piece of equipment, that this symbol of authority. So I make all this and then I also submit it to a thing called Lego Ideas. So Lego Ideas is a fantastic programme where anybody in the world, members of the public, can submit Lego Ideas, right? And they go onto a website. There's certain criteria, they have to meet a certain checklist, but then the rest of the public can vote for them. So, I mean, if Taylor Swift just stuck together a load of blocks and said, “Vote for this,” she probably hit the 10,000 threshold instantly. Andrew Webb: But I'm not sure Lego would necessarily take that forward as a build. So there is a judging panel that. But actually, some of the most recent really fantastic sets have come out of Lego Ideas. Members of the public, and they're designing things that the Lego designers wouldn't have thought of themselves. So I think that's been kind of interesting. Sadly, Paul, we didn't make the 10,000 threshold. We did a lot of media coverage. By then, lockdown was over and were sort of getting back to our lives and all this sort of stuff. And my daughter was entering her dark ages. And so it sat in my studio for another sort of year and a half and I thought, “What am I going to do with this?” And so in the end, I thought, “Well, you know what? It's gathering dust here. I'm fed up with it, dustin it.”Andrew Webb: And so I actually approached Josh Ward at the National Trust at Sutton Hoo, who has been a fantastic advocate for Lego and for this particular project, and I have to thank him immensely for that. And they got some money and some funding to build a cabinet and also to house it. So I donated it to National Trust and it is now on display there as part of their firmament of interpretational trail. Paul Marden: That must feel pretty good fow you. Andrew Webb: Yeah, it is quite good looking in there and watching kids go, “Wow.” Because Lego is one of those things instantly recognisable for kids. But certain hill as a site is quite complex for children to contextualise because essentially it's several mounds in the ground. And the helmet itself is at the British Museum. Right. They've got a replica built by the royal armouries. There were several of those. They've got those. They have loads of dress up, they have great explainers and videos and they do a lot of work to show the size and shape and things as a cast iron sculpture, to represent the boat, to show just how big it was when it was pulled up from the sea, because he's buried in a boat. So do a lot of that work, sort of that sort of work as well. Andrew Webb: But having this extra funding in the. They opened up Edith's pretty's house now, and having this room where we've got some other things as well, like crayons and paper and other tools and drawings and colouring in and Lego and big chest of Lego just helps, particularly smaller children who, by the time they've walked from the car park around the site, and it has probably flagged it a little bit. And so just providing that little support for them, it's been a fantastic way to contextualise and another way to interpret that. And I think more and more venues could look into that. When you think, well, how else can we add stuff, particularly for children to help tell the story of this place? Paul Marden: Yeah, absolutely. Absolutely. We went to. It was half term last week and went to the City Museum in Winchester. So they've got some mediaeval, they've got some Roman finds there, and there was lots of fun, but they had. It was full of lots of ways for kids to engage, so there was trails to go around, there was colouring in, make your own mediaeval shield. And all of these things are ways that, you know, my ten year old could engage with it because there's only so many glass cabinets of stuff dug up from the ground that she actually wants to look at. Andrew Webb: I mean, I love. I love pit rivers, right, in Oxford, my favourite museum. Paul Marden: It's crazy, isn't it? I love it. Andrew Webb: But basically, he just went around the world nicking stuff. Right, but as a collection of objects, It's fantastic. Paul Marden: It's deeply unnerving. Andrew Webb: Sorry, sorry if any pit rivers curators are listening there, nick, and stuff about it, but, it is my favourite museum because it's just for kids. It's probably really kind of like, how do you tell that story? I also think there was an article in the garden recently that, you know, the cost of living crisis as well. Parents are looking for value solutions now and so I think it wasn't Peppa Pig World, it was Paddington World. And a family ticket is 170 pounds. That is a huge dent in the family finances for a 70 minutes experience. If you are watching the pennies, if you can afford that and save up for it, whatever. And I know these things are, you know, memory making and all that sort of stuff, and I've been to Harry Potter with my daughter. Andrew Webb: That is not cheap, but it's a fantastic day out because once you're in, you spend the whole day there. If you take a packed lunch, you can save a lot of money on that, on the thing. But I suppose what I'm saying is that, you know, our museums and galleries, particularly traditionally, the what you might call free spaces, public spaces, are facing unprecedented demand in terms of parents looking for cost effective value days out, as well as funding being cut from central government and that sort of. So they have to do a huge amount with less and less for a bigger audience. And that is a strain on any institution and things like that. Other examples of places that get this. Andrew Webb: So obviously with the Sutton Hoo helmet, the hold in Ipswich, which is Suffolk Council's kind of flagship museum in the county town of Ipswich, but instead of calling it, you know, the Museum of Suffolk, they've called it The Hold, which is a reference to the fact it's on, I think it's either because it's on the shore or it's doing sheep, I'm not sure anyway. But a fantastic space, contemporary modern space  had a Lego exhibition a few years ago, borrowed my helmet, had some Lego exhibition stuff to do. And the good thing about that is when these teams have to do quite a lot of comms marketing and, you know, that has a cost as well, but often you see different demographics than perhaps would normally go to a stones and bones museum, if you know what I mean. Right. Andrew Webb: You'll see that it makes it more accessible to the community and to different people who don't like going and looking at the Magna Carta or whatever. For some kids, a day at the British Library is fantastic. Look at all these old books for more, maybe more boisterous children. That's probably not a really great idea. So I think galleries can take a leaf out of this and think, or museums or any institution really can take a leap out of this and think, “How can we do more for less? And what tools can we have that perhaps we haven't considered before, like Lego, as a way to open up our interpretation and our offering?” So this could work in Museum of Docklands, for example. This could work in the royal armouries. Andrew Webb: There's lots of places where if you looking to improve your children's offering that some form of lego, I mean, it ends up all over the floor, it ends up being taken away. Sometimes you've got to watch out for things like that. But that's why I always recommend, like, just the basic blocks and plates, not minifigures and stuff like that, because, you know, they just end up in kids' pockets and trousers. But I do think it is a fantastic tool for developing that interpretation piece. Paul Marden: So I run a coding club using Lego. Okay. So I work with years four, five and six, typically. And we normally start off by the end of two terms, we will be building robotics, programming things, doing amazing things. But we start at the very beginning with just open up a box, and it is amazing what a bunch of seven, eight and nine year olds can do with a two by four red brick just given bricks. Yeah. And they will build amazing things. Yeah. And they will tell you amazing stories. And you also see real diversity in the behaviours of children, because some children, in that free play context, they do not have the skills to do that. And I had one girl recently who hasn't played with Lego, and free play just blew her mind, and she was in tears because she couldn't embrace the creativity of it.Paul Marden: But then the following week, when we were following instructions, she was great at building from a set of instructions, You can do that from a limited palette and give them a mission. Sutton Hoo, build a, I don't know, a sword, build a shield, build something to interpret what you have seen. You're in the transport museum. Build, build. How did you get to the museum this morning? Give them something to do and then let them go. And half an hour later, you will be amazed by what they will have built. Andrew Webb: I actually did something this at the National Archives down in Kew, where they had a kids exhibition. Well, an exhibition in the summer about wacky inventions, because obviously the National Archives holds the patents for all these things, and they've got things like Victorian top hats with umbrellas in, and, you know, all this kind of crazy Heath Robinson style stuff that, you know, forks with four sets of tines, so you can eat four times as much. It just bonkers. Really interesting things. The curators had gone through and found this wacky world, sort of. What's his name? The guy that illustrates Roald Dahl. They got illustrations and all that. Paul Marden: Quentin Blake. Andrew Webb: Yeah, Quentin Blake, yeah. So they had this Quentin Blake sort of stuff, and, like, there was activities. And I came down for some special stuff because they had the first Lego brick patent in the UK. When it was first launched in the UK, 1963, I think it was. That's when they filed the patent. Paul Marden: And I bet. So that patent would be exactly the same as a two by four brick, now, won't it? Andrew Webb: The patent was for a one by four brick. Isometrically dawn. Just three diets. Just three views with what? It was a construction toy. And then the page. Sorry. And the address was just Railway Station Billund.  There wasn't like, just all the mail just went to the railway station in Billund just addressed for attention of Lego. And it's only like. I mean, it's not even a sheet of A4, It's a piece like this. And after it is something like a lamp that won't blow out on a thing, and before it's like some special kind of horse comb, but it's kind of this bonkers catalogue of just these things. But again, it was about, “Right. We did some work. The curators and interpreters looked, you know, had kids analyse the painting to think, what could it be? And look at the dates and structure. Look at that.” Andrew Webb: And then I came out and, like, did some Lego. So we did things like, who can build the longest bridge? Who can build the tallest tower out of a single colour? Those sorts of exercises. But then also the free play was build your own wacky invention. And kids are building automatically dog washers, where the dog ran on a thing and it scrubbed its back. And one kid built something that was like a thing for removing getting pips out of apples. It was just like this sort of like this crazy little tool. They like some sort of problem that he had. Andrew Webb: And I think what this also speaks to is developing those stem skills in children and adults and building that engineering, because I've also ran Lego workshops with explorers who I used to, I thought were between Cubs and scouts, but are actually after scouts. So I did this in my local town, here in Saffron Walden, and was like, “Oh, my God, these kids are like, 15, 16. They're not going to want to play Lego. Some of them are in my daughter's year at school, so. Hello, Amy.” And it was really interesting because we did a series of challenges with them. So the egg drop challenge, can you protect an egg and drop it from the floor? And can you build this and work together? Another good one is looker, runner, builder. Andrew Webb: So you give everybody two sets of the same bricks, and one person is the looker, one person is the runner, one person is the builder. So the looker can't touch, but he can tell the runner. The runner can't look at the model, he can only tell the builder, and the builder can't speak back. And so this is a really useful exercise. And I've done this with teams where, because this is exactly what businesses see, engineering will build a product. Sales or their marketing are like, what the hell is, you know, or whatever it might be. Paul Marden: It's that. It's that classic cartoon of a Swing, yeah. Andrew Webb: Yeah. So it's that, you know, this is what the brief said. Engineering interpreter does this. Marketing saw it. So it's a great tool for things like that. Especially when you put people like the C Suite or CEO's or leaders at the end, because all they're getting is the information and it. It's there and it's how to build communications. Because in life, the fluctuations reverse. A CEO says, “Let's do this.” And by the time it's cascaded down to engineering, who don't get a say, it's not at all what he imagined so, or they imagined so, it's. It's an interesting case of using tools like that. So I did that with these kids and it was fascinating because they're 14, 15, 16.Andrew Webb: A group of three girls won two out of the three challenges and probably could have won a third one if I felt that I couldn't award it to them again because it would just look weird. And they were smashing the looker runner builder thing. They were working together as a team, they were concentrating, they were solving problems, they were being creative, they took some time to prototype, they refined and iterated their design. They were doing all this sort of work. And it's brilliant because 15 year old girls don't often take engineering related STEM subjects at GCSE. Certainly, probably don't take them at a level and more than enough. And I think that I once interviewed Eben Upton, who invented Raspberry Pi, and he said, “We think about the eighties as this sort of like golden age of computing, but actually it was terrible. It was terrible for diversity, it was terrible for inclusion.“Andrew Webb: And he said, “Like growing up, there was one other kid in his town that had a computer, you know, so there was no sort of way to sort of getting other people involved and make this accessible.” And part of the reason now computers have got smaller. Some of the work I did at Pytop was like trying to make technology more accessible and seeing it not just video games and things like that, but actually I can use this in a fashion show, or I can make music, or I can use this to power some lights to do a theatre production, and trying to bring the, I guess, the creative arts into technology. And that's when we start to see the interest application of technology. Andrew Webb: And Lego plays a part in that, in the fact that it is a tool, a rapid prototyping tool that everybody is familiar with. And it is also, you know, clean, safe. There's no, you don't need blow torches and saws and those sorts of things to kind of prototype anything. You don't even need a pair of scissors, you know, it's completely tool free, unless you're using that little mini separator to get your bricks apart. And so I think that just circle back on, like, how the Science Museum or what's the one down there? Isabel Kingdom Brunel Museum and things like that. I can see those guys could be and should be thinking about, “How could we have a Lego programme?“Andrew Webb: You don't have to have a permanent deployment like they've got at Sutton Hoo although that is great because they've got the mast there as the head piece of it. But certainly a programme of events or summer camps or summer events, because I did this with English Heritage at Kenilworth Castle as well. They were having, like, a big Lego build and the public were invited in 15-minute shifts into a big marquee and everyone got given a tile. And the idea was to build the gardens because the gardens at Kenilworth Castle were laid out to impress Elizabeth the first. And so everybody got there was like bunches of stuff and regular bricks, also flowers and this sort of stuff. And it was like, “Come on, we've got to build something to impress a queen.” Andrew Webb: He said to kids, like, “Yeah, you've got to impress. Bling it up, like, dial it to ten.” And were just getting these enormous, like, avatar sized trees with just incredible bits hanging off it. And like, “There she has a teapot because she might want a cup of tea.” And you're like, “Brilliant, excellent. Of course she does.”  And so I think that. And then they moved through. Some of the Legos were selected to be displayed and things like that. So there's different ways you can do it. You can either do it as like. And I'm a big fan of the drop in sessions because kids and parents can just naturally build it into their day rather than the pre built. My child was. We were rubbish at, like, organising things. Andrew Webb: People like, “Oh, great. Half term, it's a chocolate thing, sold out ". And you're like, yeah, because there's 30 spaces for three and a half thousand kids who want to do it. Whereas if it's like a walkthrough or a. In groups phase through and then the activity, small kids kind of conk out after about 20 minutes, half an hour anyway. You get much more people through and much more people get to enjoy the experience rather than the 30 organised people who got up early and booked. So that's my other top tip to any institution, because it's heavily weather dependent as well. Sun comes out, everyone piles pass into the nearest sort of stately home, national attraction. All of those places can definitely benefit English Heritage. Did a really big push this half term, just gone on Lego at several events. Andrew Webb: We had one here at Audley End, there was one at Kenilworth that I was at. There's been pairs of the ones all around the country, because again, you just need a marquee, which most venues have access to because they use them for other things or some sort of space in case it rains. And you just see someone like me and a whole massive tub of Lego and you're off to the races. Paul Marden: Exactly. So we were talking about this at the conference yesterday about ways in which. So for many attractions, people turning up is a literal flip of a coin. Is the weather good or is the weather bad? What can you do to adapt your attraction to be able to deal with when it's bad? And then what can you do to bring people when you have made that adaptation? So, you know, you've now got a marquee and you have a Lego exhibit that you can put into there. So it's just dumping a pile of Lego and a bunch of well trained volunteers or visitor experienced people who can facilitate that, police it, little Johnny sticking minifigs in his pocket. Paul Marden: And then you turn on your Google Adwords and show that you've got this, you know, bad weather reason to go to a stately home that my daughter would turn her nose up to all of a sudden, “Okay, we're going to go and do that. We're going to go and have afternoon tea and you're going to go and play with some Lego and see some animals, maybe.” Yeah, what can you do to attract that extra audience and adapt to the bad weather and service different sorts of people? Andrew Webb: I think that comes down to a bear in mind. I convert some of my Lego lens rather than a venue lens. But I think speaking as a parent and someone who does this is you need a reason to go back to somewhere that you already know. Okay, so you go to Stonehenge, you go and look at the stones, you go, “Wow.” You look at the visitor centre and then it's ticked off. I mean, you see busloads of tourists. Stonehenge is at Cambridge, maybe, or Oxford people, when people do England, Lambeth, Heathrow, London Crown Jewels, Tower Bridge, West End, day trip out on a coach to Stonehenge, maybe to Cambridge, and that's it, off to Paris. Right? So parents like British people like that too. Like why go to Stonehenge four times a year? Or why go to any venue when you're familiar with it? Andrew Webb: It's always about offering something new and something different. Audley End up near where I live, I think, is English Heritage. All through July, every Sunday, they're just doing music. So there's a string quartet or someone with a harp or maybe someone with a guitar or whatever. And you've got a book, but it's. It's not like there's 30 places and it's a bonfight. It's just like, “Oh, wow, they've done something different.” They do a really great thing. Like, they do victorian falconry, for example. So they get someone in who talks about how Victorians use falconry for hunting as a sport, but also for the kitchen table, and they're flying falcons around and doing the whole bit of meat on a string and all this sort of stuff. And everyone, like, “They do a world war two one.”Andrew Webb: I mean, the editorial calendar for any venue's got to look like, “Go and make Christmas food. January, we're closed to kind of dust and clean everything. Valentine's Day, chocolate make you put. It's daffodils”, it's whatever it might be. And then you just build that. Build that programme in and you need. This is why I think that venues now, again, I'll just come back to that. You talk about AdWords, but that, again, is more spend. It's like, how'd you build that mail list? How do you drop into the local Facebook groups and Mumsnet and all that kind of stuff? You know, that's where you can do it organically rather than. Because people don't sit in front of Google necessarily, or think, like, what should we do? Paul Marden: You sit on the sofa on a Thursday night trying to figure out what on earth are we going to do this weekend? Yeah, so you're completely right. The mum's net, the content marketing, is hugely important, isn't it? Andrew Webb: Which is my job. But also it's kind of like how can institutions become part of that? When I say community, if you think about most people travel a thin hour to go somewhere. I mean, people go further afield, you know, but. But basically it's like, what? My mom turns, like, a tea and a pee. So you've got to go somewhere. You've got to have a cup of tea, visit the loos. It's all about tea. It's all about canteens and loos, basically. You could have a World Heritage Site, UNESCO World Heritage site. And it's like, how good's the caf? And are the toilets clean? Yeah, that's what people remember. Gar went hens at dawn. I was awed by the majestic. But that Looney D cleaning, you know, it's not good. It's all that people come home with. Andrew Webb: So, you know, institutions go into place that they are trying to offer different things. Like late nights. We've talked about that. How can we use this space after hours? Because if you think about it, if your institution's open 10 till 6, most people are at work five days a week, you're gonna have students and pensioners who are gonna be not great spenders, either of those two groups. So, late nights, I went to a great one in the National Gallery when the James Bond film. I was kind of sitting royale or whatever. He's still on the top of the National Gallery overlooking Trafalgar Square, and they've got the national dining rooms there and they had Vesper Martini, everyone got a cocktail. Andrew Webb: And then went to look at the fighting Temeraire, which is the bit where he's standing with Q, the new Q, who voices Paddington, whose name escapes me and gives him, like, a gun and a radio, but they're like the fighting Temeraire by Turner is this little thing. And so, you know, you've got to make hay out of that, right? You've got to sort of, like, do a late night, various ones. And so all it was a few cocktails in the cafe next door and are taught by the curator and stuff like that. But 30 people just looking for an experience. And so if venues are clever, of course, the dark side of this is when you get Willy Wonka world up in Scotland. Andrew Webb: Or interestingly, some of the Lego events that have been happening at NEC have caused a massive online backslash in the community for just being exceptionally bad value for money. And so you read about these things that people have said, “Come and visit Santa's grotto, and it's just a muddy field with a tree in it,” so you've got to be careful. But I think those events, those sort of fly by night kind of institutions, don't really work. But how galleries can leverage the creativity of what they're doing? Whether they are come and paint in our, you know, our local gallery, come and have an art class, come and do that. People are looking for stuff to do that is value for money. That isn't always drink lead, you know, it's not always cocktail making or things like that. Andrew Webb: And that comes with a whole heap of other things and dietary requirements for cookery courses and just clean up and the mess and all that kind of stuff. So I think that, yeah, canning organisations, the ones that can really think about that, and I'm happy to help organisations who want to think about this, especially through the life of Lego. They will be the ones that will start to add and build out and develop their. What you might term this whole sector needs a name. The kind of extracurricular offering, we might say, above and beyond their collection and then their traditional interpretation and if they're. Paul Marden: Thinking of doing this. So there's a good why. Yeah, the why is you can reach diverse audiences, helps people with interpretation. Andrew Webb: Quite cheap. Paul Marden: Yeah, absolutely. It's a cheap way of extending your offering and diversifying what you do. You can bring in event elements to this, but how do they do it? Apart from engaging with somebody like you? And I'm going to guess there's not many people like you. So that's going to be a tricky thing for some people to do. But if they were starting from scratch, how would they go about doing this? You said earlier, “Don't go mad with buying the bricks and spending a fortune on.”Andrew Webb: There are people like me that can do all this as well as myself. I think that the first thing is plan it. Plan what you need to do. You can't throw this stuff together. You might be looking at. Already the hold have been contacting me for a late night they're doing in September. They contacted me April. Paul Marden: Okay. Andrew Webb: Because if you're a creator, you're planning exhibitions, you are thinking on that long term cycle. Paul Marden: Yeah, completely. Andrew Webb: And so what you need to do is bake this in as part of that curational process or part of the interpretation of things at the start, rather than like, “Right, we're doing exhibit on Peter Rabbit, let's chuck in a load of fluffy bunnies or whatever.” You know, it's got to be. You've got to think about it and have it contextualised. I think the best things are. What success looks like is, first of all, you need a space. Now you can hire a marquee that comes with a cost. If you're a venue and you've got your own or you've got a hall or a stables or interpretational room or something like that, often spaces, specifically bigger ones, will have classroom spaces for school groups anyway. So that's often that can be where you can host these sorts of events. Kids are very familiar. Andrew Webb: The chairs are all small wall colour, you know, etc. Industrial strength carpet in case stuff gets built. So locations like where you're going to stage this? Paul Marden: Yeah. Andrew Webb: Secondly, I think you need to think about, what do we want people to do? What is the experience? What is the narrative piece? Because you can't just say, here's a big part of Lego. Kids will just build cars and houses, right? You know, they need context. You know, if you give a kid a sheet of paper, you could draw anything. They're like, well, what? And so you need to give them a mission almost. They need a task, I think. Also think about, as I said before, keeping the tasks around 20 minutes, because actually adding the time running out jeopardy element is quite fun for kids because they'll go, “Well, I've only got five minutes left.” And often that's when it all falls apart and then they have to iterate the design. Andrew Webb: So think about that kind of moving people through in 15 to 20 minutes cycles. We had kids at Kenilworth, that would go out the exit and just walk back around and come in the front like that. Like four or five times. One boy came in, he was loving it. So think about that. Think about how you're going to move people through the space. Think about what you need to envisage it. So the Kenilworth, for example, there was me hosting it from dawn toward dusk. We had another builder there who was helping take break it all down and put them against the model that we built. There were two members of staff who were letting people through, so just monitoring it from an entry exit point of view, walkie talkies, in case people had issues and things like that. Andrew Webb: And think about when you're going to do it. Okay, so half term is a good one. It's a good thing to do. We saw a lot of this at Kenilworth, but I've seen other places as well, particularly half terms and things like that. You often see grandparents caring for grandchildren, right? Because parents are at work and grandparents can only walk around the site so much before they want to sit down. So sometimes have it, like, think about where they can. And when I was at Kenilworth, grandparents came in with their two grandkids, and the kids started playing and I was like, you could join in, too. Oh, no, I don't want it. You know, they were almost like, “I can't do this. It's like, come on, get in, get in. Come on, grandma. Come on. I'll show you how it works. “Andrew Webb: By the end of that session, they were memory making. I then took their photo with their phones, they'd have this sort of grandparent. But, you know, you always say it like, my grandfather taught me to fish. Like Sean Connery says in the hunt for red October. This sort of moment where sort of, it's a Hollywood trope that grandfather knowledge is sort of passed on type of thing. Right. And so you can see that where you could have this, almost either the reverse of that, of kids showing grandparents, but also they're all having this event outside of the parental unit. So it's a new type of experience. It adds value, it gets people to play with their grandkids. Paul Marden: Priceless. Andrew Webb: So I think that's kind of an interesting way. So think about when, think about where and think about what will be my three sort of tips for any institution looking to put this together. Paul Marden: You gave one the other day which I thought was priceless, which was, don't give them wheels. Andrew Webb: Oh, yes. Paul Marden: Don't include the wheels. Andrew Webb: Take the wheels out of any sets, unless you are the Transport Museum or the, you know, a car based museum, because kids will do wings as well. I'd probably suggest taking those out because kids have just built cars. Some kids have just built cars, you know, even if you give them a mission. Unless that is the mission. The other thing that I would think that venues could do as well as sort of all day events, because it's quite a time drain, you know, on staff and this sort of stuff, but it is a value. The other thing you can think about is one off evening events for adults. Yes, I've done this. I did this at my local add them shops. Bricks, beers and bubbles challenges supercompass teams. Think of it like a pub quiz with brick is the answer. Andrew Webb: So build me a thing that does that kind of thing. Teams all get together, you can race them, you can see who goes the furthest. You can do all this stuff. And the hold is what I'm doing at the hold in September. I did it at the hold a couple of years ago. And what was interesting was that we had quite diverse groups of adults. We had just couples who were clearly AFOLs and were like, “Yeah, I'm going to go to that.” We had a group of friends. One of them had just come back from years travelling and they didn't want to go sort of straight to the pub and just interrogate him about his travelling, whatever. Andrew Webb: They kind of like, “Well, we wanted something to do where we could have a beer and have a chat, but were doing something else whilst we're doing that.” And that's the joy of Lego. Your hands are doing the work and you're almost like the back of your brain is doing the work and you're like, “Oh, yeah, yeah. Before you kick them.” And the concentration levels are there and then you can kind of get into that state of flow. And so they were just having this lovely chat, had a beer, talking about stuff, but also memory making in terms of when he came back from his travelling. So I think that's really important. Andrew Webb: Did you know that this is your brain, right? And then your brain on Lego, there are 24 discrete skills that are happening in your brain. So Lego research this, things like fine motor skills, cognitive sort of thinking about things, future planning, my favourite emotional regulation that is not going, “Oh, my God, it's not working. And smashing all to pieces.” So I've seen this as well with children, is that when you give them a Lego, if you gave them jelly and a football, they'll all just. They're a high energy kind of things, right? And that's fine, great outdoors, kids want to burn off energy. Here's a load of balls. Go crazy, right? Or ball pits, trampolines, bouncy castles, those sorts of things. When you get on Lego, what actually happens is it's very hard to be anarchic, to use a wrong word, but a word. It's very hard to be anarchic with Lego because you can't really do it. Andrew Webb: And so you can get a group of kids together and they'll almost self invigilate. And at one point, I ran it at a local toy shop and the parents are all hanging about and like, “I've never seen them so quiet.” They were just in the state of flow. And so, I think, you know, again, back to the. Back to the explorers and the scouts, that was one of the best sessions that those kids had done as teenagers because the reason was they were given permission to play with Lego. They still had the muscle memory from when they were smaller children. They were solving. They weren't just being told to play with Lego, they were actually solving engineering challenges. How can you design a bridge that will take this weight? How can you protect an egg? How can you think about this? Andrew Webb: And so you need to think about the challenge and the what. You need to think about that, the where and you think about the when, as I said, and get those right. You can have a very exceptional visitor experience for not a huge amount of effort. It's not highly costly, it's not highly technical, it's just a bit of elbow grease and a bit of forward thinking in terms of what we might need. And I think that parents appreciate just that minute away where they can. It's almost like a 20 minute babysitter, right, where they can just go, “Don't touch that.” You know, you're walking around a stately home, “Don't sit there, don't touch. Mind the lady.” All that kind of no data that parents give out institutions, they can just take a breather and check their phones and whatever. Paul Marden: And the kids are just having an amazing time. Andrew Webb: Yeah. And the kids are happy. And at the end of the day, as a parent, we all do our best and you just want, you know, them to be playing with something screen free, getting along and learning something. And, you know, that is the win. That is the ultimate takeout. You can layer on your own institution in context and rev up the visitor experience, bring in new visitors, attract a more diverse group of people that perhaps wouldn't normally come to a Regency Rococo style villa or whatever it might be, then that's all to the better, because, you know, you can start to use this in your planning and you can do what Suntton Hoo did? And go, right, well, we've done this and it's really worked. Andrew Webb: And then I can apply for funding for it and I can expand and I can make it permanent and then I can sort of say, well, this now becomes a tool and a string and arbo for our educational. It doesn't have to be split between visitor attractions and development. It can, you know, you can split it between several parts of the institution and use it in different ways, use it for educational purposes as well as visitor experience. So the world's your oyster with a bit of thinking. Paul Marden: With a bit of Lego and a bit of thinking. Andrew Webb: Bit of Lego, yeah. A few bricks and a couple of tricks and you're off to the races. Paul Marden: Andrew, this has been brilliant. Thank you ever so much. Andrew Webb: You're welcome. Paul Marden: I've got one more question for you before we finish. Now, you bottled this earlier on when I said we always have a book recommendation from our guests. And in spite of having the fullest bookshelf I've seen in quite a long time, you've bottled it on a book. But you did offer me a favourite movie. And so what would be your movie recommendation of choice? Andrew Webb: My go to movie would probably be Withnail and I, Richard E. Grant's first film. Every line has came down from God on a tablet. I mean, it is just. Yeah. Richard Griffiths as Uncle Monty, Paul McGann. It's just one of my favourite films and, you know, cult classic that no one's really. Well, people have heard of it now, but again, they even make stuff out with Alan Eyright. So you can go and watch a screening of it at the farm at Crow Crag up in Penrith, you know, and everyone dresses up and everyone comes with Mister blathering sets tea and I come on holiday by mistake and Jessie says, Danny. Andrew Webb: And, you know, fortunately, for better or for worse, I know these are tough times, but people try and find the fun in things. They try and at the end of the day, everyone's looking for a good time, whether we're children or an adult. You want something to just have a laugh and take you away for a moment. And if films and culture but also experiences can do that, then that's all for the good. Paul Marden: Well, look, this is going to be a challenge, but listeners, if you would like a copy of Andrew's film recommendation, then when we release the show message on X, if you can retweet that and say, “Give me Andrew's movie”, then the first person that does that, somehow I will get the movie to you. It might be on VHS, it might be on DVD, but somehow we will get you a movie. Andrew Webb: I found a CD the other day from a bar I used to go to in Clapham in the noughties and late ‘90s. I said to my mate, look, I'm great, put it on. And I went, “I can't.” I haven't got a CD player anymore. I had to go dig through a box somewhere in the study to find a portable CD player that plugged into my computer that could. By the end of it, we're just laugh. Forget it. Paul Marden: Andrew, this has been wonderful. Thank you ever so much. Andrew Webb: You're welcome. Cheers. Paul Marden: Thanks for listening to Skip the Queue. If you've enjoyed this podcast, please leave us a five star review. It really helps others find us. And remember to follow us on Twitter for your chance to win the books that have been mentioned. Skip The Queue is brought to you by Rubber Cheese, a digital agency that builds remarkable systems and websites for attractions that helps them increase their visitor numbers. You can find show notes and transcriptions from this episode and more over on our website, SkiptheQueue.fm. The 2024 Visitor Attraction Website Survey is now LIVE! Help the entire sector:Dive into groundbreaking benchmarks for the industryGain a better understanding of how to achieve the highest conversion ratesExplore the "why" behind visitor attraction site performanceLearn the impact of website optimisation and visitor engagement on conversion ratesUncover key steps to enhance user experience for greater conversionsFill in your data now (opens in new tab)

Katie and Sally discuss Pink by Kyoko Okazaki (Vertical, 2013, orig. pub. 1989). Topics discussed include Graham Rawle, Quentin Blake, Jennifer's Body, Jean-Luc Godard, and Lana Del Rey's Phoebe Gloeckner moment. Thank you to our subscribers for making this episode possible!

Zagazoo is a baby like no other. There are some hilarious and unexpected changes in his behaviour as he grows up! Some are very, very strange….

När farbror Knutte köper en motorcykel får Fru Sunesson ärva hans gamla bil. Tillsammans med sin trogna hund ger hon sig ut på vägarna, men mycket kan hända med en gammal bil. Lyssna på alla avsnitt i Sveriges Radio Play. En humoristisk saga där det hela tiden händer något bang! och boing! och ssskkkrrraaabang! så de får åka till skroten och fixa. Sen är det bara att trampa på gasen igen.Författare: Quentin Blake (boken gavs ut 2003)Översättare: Måns GahrtonBerättare: Fatima JelassiProducent: Matilda Ivarsson Kihlberg, Iris Media

Fru Sunesson är ute och cyklar, men cykeln fungerar inte riktigt som den ska. Tutan hörs inte och kedjan hoppar. Fru Sunesson fixar det, men snart upptäcker hon att det är fler saker som saknas på cykeln Lyssna på alla avsnitt i Sveriges Radio Play. En charmig och humoristisk saga om en cykeltur som fortsätter längre och längre bort, tills det slutligen tar STOPP!Författare: Quentin Blake (boken gavs ut 2006)Översättare: Måns GahrtonBerättare: Fatima JelassiProducent: Matilda Ivarsson Kihlberg, Iris Media

Welkom bij de PrentenboekenCast, een podcast over prenten- en versjesboeken die je voor kunt lezen aan kinderen van 0 t/m 6 jaar. In deze aflevering bespreken we boeken binnen het thema GROEIEN.De boeken die we bespreken zijn: BabyboekGOEDEMORGEN van Fleur van der Weel, uitgeverij Querido, 2024Dreumes- peuterboek UIT EEN EI van Paulina Morgan Veltman uitgevers, 2022PeuterboekWAT ZIT ER IN DIE DIKKE BUIK? Van Bette Westera en Aniek Bartels, uitgeverij Gottmer, 2023Peuter- KleuterboekenDONDERKOPJE van Benji Davies, uitgeverij Luitingh-Sijthoff, kartonboekje 2024ZENO ZAAIT EEN ZONNEBLOEM van Kate Petty en Axel Scheffler, uitgeverij Lemniscaat, 2023BIBI PLANT EEN BOOM van William Petty en Axel Scheffler, uitgeverij Lemniscaat, 2023KleuterboekenIK BEN NU ECHT WEL GROOT, van Maisie Paradise Shearring , uitgeverij Boycott, 2023DE GROTE BEERRUPS, van Julia Donaldson en Yuval Sommer, uitgeverij Lemniscaat, 2022WORD NOOIT GROOT, geïnspireerd op de ondeugende originaliteit van Roald Dahl met illustraties van Quentin Blake, uitgeverij De Fontein, 2022Klassieker MIJN KUIKEN - VAN EI TOT KUIKEN - van Eve Tharlet en Géraldine Elschner, vertaald door Joukje Akveld, uitgeverij de Vier Windstreken, 2011Versjesboek LATER ALS IK GROOT BEN, Grootzus & Floortje Schoevaart, uitgeverij Rubinstein, 2021 De muzikale intermezzo's zijn van Erik van Os (compositie) en Frans van der Meer (Productie)We willen @silversterkinderenjeugdboeken bedanken voor de samenwerking en beschikbaar stellen van nieuwe boeken om in onze podcast te kunnen bespreken.Veel luister- én voorleesplezier gewenst!Volg ons ook via: https://www.instagram.com/prentenboekencast/

you really will never guess what happens --- Send in a voice message: https://podcasters.spotify.com/pod/show/malutka/message

Brown bear, brown bear, what do you see? I see a new Dork Matters ep with Ben and Lexi. We're dorking out about the best, most amazing, legendary children's book illustrator-authors! With a bit of conspiracy theorizing about the Sankebetsu brown bear incident. Grab a blanky, get comfy, and let us tell you a story.FURTHER DORKSCUSSION:Sankebetsu brown bear incidentLegendary illustratorsMaurice Sendak - Where the Wild Things Are, Chicken Soup with RiceDr Seuss (Theodore Geisel), The Grinch, Green Eggs & HamEric Carle - Brown Bear, The Very Hungry CaterpillarRichard Scarry - Best Ever/BusytownBeatrix potter - Peter Rabbit, Benjamin Bunny, Jeremy FisherClement Hurd - Goodnight Moon, The Runaway BunnyEH Shepard - The Wind in the Willows, Winni-the-PoohUl de Rico - THE RAINBOW GOBLINS!Ezra Jack Keats - The Snowy Day, Peter's ChairBONUS CONTENT:Ul de Rico concept art for The Neverending Story (1984)Sendak's In the Night Kitchen: Unusual History of Censorship by Laura CattrysseBeatrix Potter - The Dead AuthorsProdorkcer Jess Schmidt's picks:say what you will about Roald Dahl, but Quentin Blake is an iconic illustrator in my mindLudwig Bemelmans of the Madeline books was another fave of my childhoodShel Silverstein was my first introduction to poetry and again just iconicThe Velveteen Rabbit was a book that I asked for all the time, illustrated by William Nicholson"I remember that as a child, when I felt overwhelmed, my mother would reassure me by saying, ‘One piece at a time.' That's good advice for many things in life." -Eric Carle SOCIALS:Here's where you can find us!Lexi' Hunt's website and twitter and instagramBen Rankel's website and instagram and where to buy his book: Amazon.ca / Comixology / Ind!go / Renegade ArtsJess Schmidt's website, twitter and instagramDork Matter's website(WIP) and twitter and instagram and redditThis podcast is created on the traditional territories of the Blackfoot Nations, which includes the Siksika, the Piikani, and the Kainai. We also acknowledge the Stoney Nakota Nation, Tsuut'ina, and Metis Nation Region 3.Help your dorky pals spread the word: share us on social media or give Dork Matters a rating and review on Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your pods! Thank you for helping us to share our love of all things Dork!

Happy New Year!, The Observer, Dark Harvest, Dirty Filthy Love, A Murder at the End of the World, For All Mankind, Rick and Morty, Quentin Blake's Box of Treasures: Zagazoo, Quentin Blake's Box of Treasures: Jack and Nancy, Doctor Who: Wild Blue Yonder, Doctor Who: The Church on Ruby Road, The Famous Five, Yes Minister, The Thick of It, Columbo, Blake's 7, JLab Rewind Wireless Retro Headphones, A Hash of Things, New Year's Resolutions

Happy New Year!, The Observer, Dark Harvest, Dirty Filthy Love, A Murder at the End of the World, For All Mankind, Rick and Morty, Quentin Blake's Box of Treasures: Zagazoo, Quentin Blake's Box of Treasures: Jack and Nancy, Doctor Who: Wild Blue Yonder, Doctor Who: The Church on Ruby Road, The Famous Five, Yes Minister, The Thick of It, Columbo, Blake's 7, JLab Rewind Wireless Retro Headphones, A Hash of Things, New Year's Resolutions

Dan got chatting to Huw who plays Jack in Jack and Nancy, one of the amazing animations in Quentin Blake's Box of Treasures on CBBC!See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

Conor has Christmas sorted with a selection of Christmas classics you HAVE to watch over the festive season! Hear from the cast of The Famous Five and Quentin Blake's Box of Treasures! Plus we spoke to the geniuses behind Kung Fu Panda 4! It's a jam packed Christmas episode for you! See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

Un livre, Un lecteur. Florence Berthout reçoit Émilie Nouveau qui parlera du livre « L'ours et l'ermite » de John Yeoman et Quentin Blake. À propos du livre : « L'ours et l'ermite » paru aux éditions Quentin Blake L'Ermite s'ennuie au fond de la forêt : il a ouvert une école mais jamais personne ne s'est présenté. De son côté, l'Ours voudrait bien s'instruire pour devenir intelligent. C'est parti pour de folles journées d'école au bord de la rivière, d'une catastrophe à l'autre, jusqu'à la naissance d'une amitié indestructible entre l'homme et l'animal. Quand, en 1960, Quentin Blake voulut pour la première fois illustrer un livre d'enfants, il s'adressa à son ami John Yeoman. Un duo de génie était né pour le plus grand bonheur de générations de lecteurs. L'Ours et l'Ermite fait partie de ce trésor d'histoires qui peuplent les mémoires de tous les enfants.

Hello and welcome to The Animation Action Hour, An Animation podcast, by animators, for everyone! Episode 31 of the show and its time for our THIRD entry into the Animation Action Hour Hall Of Fame! Entry 3 is an egg-cellent film, its Aardman classic Chicken Run! Plus, we're joined by the incredible animator Dani Abram (Puffin Rock, Star Wars: Visions, Quentin Blake's The Clown) to discuss the movie, its production, its legacy and just to have a good old natter about animation in general! A SUPER-FUN One not to be missed! Like what you hear? Then PLEASE rate and review us on your pod-catcher of choice, and if you'd like to ask us anything, please feel free to get in touch! Contacts: Twitter: @AnimActionPod Instagram: @AnimActionPod E-Mail: AnimActionHour@Gmail.com Dani Abram: Twitter: @Bintykins E-Mail: Dani@DaniAbram.co.uk Her Podcast Twitter: @RetakesPod Podcast E-Mail: RetakesPod@Gmail.com

Go to https://squarespace.com/jonsolo to save 10% off your first purchase of a website or domain using code JONSOLO (☞ﾟヮﾟ)☞ ► Messed Up Origins™ Socials! » https://twitter.com/MessedUpOrigins » https://www.instagram.com/messeduporigins/ ▼ Podcast Links! ▼ » Apple: https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/jon-solos-messed-up-origins-podcast/id1631064271 » Spotify: https://open.spotify.com/show/0zC1NxCX576HHQUoYCuGDo » Google Podcasts: https://www.google.com/podcasts?feed=aHR0cHM6Ly9mZWVkcy5tZWdhcGhvbmUuZm0vbWVzc2VkdXBvcmlnaW5z » Amazon Music: https://music.amazon.com/podcasts/e2ab5016-5166-4670-b0a3-7c6ade06947d/jon-solos-messed-up-origins-podcast » Stitcher: https://www.stitcher.com/podcast/jon-solos-messed-up-origins-podcast » iHeartRadio: https://iheart.com/podcast/99117988/ ► SOLOFAM MERCH: » https://bit.ly/SoloFamMerch ► Support the series on Patreon! » https://www.patreon.com/JonSolo ▼ Timestamps ▼ » 0:00 - The Power of Roald Dahl » 1:44 - Chapters 1 - 10 » 10:06 - Chapters 11 - 26 » 21:24 - Chapters 27 - 39 » 28:30 - James and the Giant P**** ► Want more? » ALL Messed Up Origins: https://bit.ly/MessedUpOrigins » Featured Folklore (the animated series!): https://bit.ly/featuredfolklore » Disney Explained: https://bit.ly/DisneyExplained » ALL Mythology Explained: https://bit.ly/MythologyExplained » Norse Mythology: http://bit.ly/NorseMythologyExplained » Folklore Explained: https://bit.ly/FablesExplained » Astrology: http://bit.ly/AstrologyExplained » Messed Up Murders: https://bit.ly/MurderPlaylist ▬▬▬▬▬▬▬▬▬▬▬▬▬▬▬▬▬▬▬ ► Social Media: » Twitter: https://twitter.com/JonSolo » Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/JonSolo » Facebook Fan Page: https://facebook.com/TheRealJonSolo » Official Subreddit: https://www.reddit.com/r/jonsolo ► Join the Official Channel Discord: » https://www.patreon.com/JonSolo ► Send Fan Mail to: » SoloFamMail@gmail.com ► Business: » biz@MessedUpOrigins.com (Business Inquiries ONLY) ▬▬▬▬▬▬▬▬▬▬▬▬▬▬▬▬▬▬▬ ▼ Art Sources ▼ » Illustrations copyright © 1995 by Quentin Blake: https://www.quentinblake.com/ ▼ Resources ▼ » my favorites: https://messeduporigins.com/books » James and the Giant Peach (kindle edition): https://amzn.to/3Qi7gId » James and the Giant Peach (hardcover edition): https://amzn.to/3Qi7gId » Roald Dahl's Warning: https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2023/02/25/roald-dahl-warned-politically-correct-publishers-change-one/ » The (re)Writing of Roald Dahl: https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2023/02/17/roald-dahl-books-rewritten-offensive-matilda-witches-twits/ » Changes made to Oompa Loompas: https://theconversation.com/from-pygmies-to-puppets-what-to-do-with-roald-dahls-enslaved-oompa-loompas-in-modern-adaptations-166967#:~:text=In%20the%20first%20edition%20of,part%20human%2C%20part%20puppet ▼ Credits ▼ » Researched by: Jon Solo » Edited by: Jon Solo » Written & Directed by: Jon Solo #messeduporigins #disney #roalddahl *Amazon links are part of the affiliate program, meaning we get a little kickback every time a book is purchased through that link :)

Questa non è un'autobiografia. Afferma lo stesso Roald Dahl nella prefazione del suo libro intitolato Boy (titolo dall'originale inglese: Boy. Tales of Childhood), scritto nel 1984 all'età di 68 anni e pubblicato in traduzione italiana nel 1994 da Salani (traduzione italiana di Donatella Ziliotto). Vi starete chiedendo: come mai questa non è un'autobiografia? L'autore ne spiega subito il motivo: Un'autobiografia è quel libro che si scrive per raccontare la propria vita e che generalmente è zeppo di ogni specie di particolari noiosi.Mi chiamo Marica Iannuzzi e oggi vorrei parlarvi di questa particolare (non) autobiografia.Boy è rivolto al pubblico più giovane ed è corredato da lettere autografe, fotografie e illustrazioni di Quentin Blake, fedele illustratore dei libri di Roald Dahl. Gli avvenimenti narrati si svolgono in Inghilterra e in Norvegia all'inizio del ‘900 e ricoprono l'arco di vita dai 6 ai 20 anni di questo straordinario autore.Roald Dahl, scrittore di romanzi e racconti e anche regista, è un pilastro della letteratura per ragazzi e padre di numerosissimi personaggi ancora oggi celebri. La sua vita è segnata da continue sofferenze: malattie che gli portano via prematuramente moglie e figli e un gravissimo incidente aereo durante la Seconda guerra mondiale. Da difficoltà, troppo ingiuste, e dagli adulti, troppo seri secondo lui, decide di scrivere per i bambini, l'unico modo per divertire anche sé stesso.Boy di Roald Dahl è la sua (non) autobiografia, la selezione di ricordi con cui quest'autore ci dimostra che le esperienze, positive o negative, possono sempre essere trasformate in qualcosa di utile per noi e per gli altri e trasformabili anche… in libri. Non a caso nelle sue storie lui impasta con leggerezza e profondità i personaggi che ha incontrato nella vita e che noi incontriamo in queste sue pagine. Facciamo qualche esempio: dalla sorvegliante della scuola viene alla luce la terribile signorina Spezzindue del romanzo Matilde; dagli sporadici regali in collegio arriva l'ispirazione per scrivere La fabbrica di cioccolato; dalla proprietaria del negozio di dolci che il piccolo Dahl aveva sul tragitto casa-scuola prende vita la nonna del protagonista de La magica medicina. Nell'ultimo capitolo l'autore comincia a parlare del Dahl adulto, uomo d'affari a Londra, definendosi felice, veramente felice (p. 183). Con il suo solito umorismo considera questa vita semplice se confrontata con quella di uno scrittore che è un vero inferno, perché deve forzarsi a lavorare, deve imporsi un orario, deve trovare continuamente nuove idee (p. 183). Secondo lui bisogna essere pazzi, per fare gli scrittori. La loro sola compensazione è un'assoluta libertà. Il loro unico padrone è la loro anima ed è per questo che hanno fatto quella scelta, lui ne è certo (p. 183).E io sono certa che per immaginare, creare, raccontare come questo scrittore bisogna essere geniali, non pazzi. Bisogna diventare grandi restando bambini. Ed è proprio quello che ci accade quando leggiamo Roald Dahl: diventiamo grandi restando bambini. Perché le sue storie riescono a incantarci a ogni età e a trasformare ingiustizie e difficoltà.

Conduce con Doña Eremita, su perro Mambrú y con los monstruos en el viejo automóvil que nos han regalado. Escucharemos este episodio durante un accidentado paseo, ¿nos acompañas? Mrs. Armitage Queen of the Road es el título original de Doña Eremita, reina de la carretera un álbum ilustrado publicado por primera vez en 2003 por Random House Children's Books, editado en España por Ediciones Ekaré. Escrito e ilustrado por Quentin Blake. Recomendado para lectores a partir de 3 años. ¡Apoya a tu podcast amigo! Compra nuestros libros en tu librería preferida Encuéntralos en Todos tus libros https://bit.ly/TTL_Holamonstruo O bien desde nuestra tienda online en www.holamonstruo.com/books Ayúdanos con la producción de este podcast. Hazte patreon de Hola monstruo con el nivel Monstruo o Súper Monstruo www.patreon.com/holamonstruo Comparte este podcast con tus conocidos y amigos. Habla con los monstruos sobre literatura infantil y juvenil, de los episodios del podcast o sobre nuestros libros ¡Te esperamos en el canal de telegram! https://telegram.me/holamonstruo/ Música del episodio: Sneaky adventure y Happy Boy de Kevin McLeod, Comedy one y Comedy three de Rafael Krux. Todas con licencia CC BY.

Full episode at patreon.com/thicklinespod. Katie and Sally discuss "Pink" by Kyoko Okazaki (Vertical, 2013, orig. pub. 1989). Topics discussed include Graham Rawle, Quentin Blake, Jennifer's Body, Jean-Luc Godard, and Lana Del Rey's Phoebe Gloeckner moment. Support the show and get bonus episodes at patreon.com/thicklinespod. Follow us on Instagram @thicklinespod.

BD, romans graphiques, romans, cinéma... Joann Sfar a un appétit insatiable. Rencontre avec un homme qui participe à faire de la BD un art à part entière. En dialogue avec Alain Berland. Joann Sfar naît à Nice en 1971, d'une mère chanteuse et d'un père avocat. Il grandit dans la culture juive, ashkénaze et séfarade à la fois, apprend l'hébreu et les préceptes de la Torah, mais fréquente l'école publique. Très tôt, et avec l'abondance qui le caractérise encore aujourd'hui, il invente et dessine des histoires. Dès l'âge de quinze ans, il envoie à des éditeurs un projet de bande dessinée par mois, que tous lui refusent avec la même régularité. Après une maîtrise de philosophie à l'université de Nice, il entre aux Beaux-Arts de Paris et se passionne pour les cours de morphologie. En 1993, il passe la porte de l'atelier Nawak, futur atelier des Vosges, où il fera la connaissance de Lewis Trondheim, David B., Jean-Christophe Menu, Emmanuel Guibert, Christophe Blain, Émile Bravo, Marjane Satrapi. En 1994, trois maisons différentes lui proposent d'éditer son travail. Son premier album, "Noyé le poisson", est publié cette année-là par L'Association. Depuis Joann Sfar compose une œuvre d'une originalité absolue. La profondeur de ses histoires n'exclut jamais la drôlerie ou la sensualité. Ses personnages ont la truculence de ceux d'Albert Cohen et le plaisir de dessiner est chez lui aussi communicatif que chez Quentin Blake. Il est de ceux grâce auxquels la bande dessinée s'est éveillée à une vie nouvelle. Après une série d'animation adaptée de son « Petit Vampire » pour France Télévision en 2004, il passe au cinéma avec simultanément "Gainsbourg vie héroïque" qui obtiendra 3 Césars en 2011 puis l'adaptation de son "Chat du Rabbin" coécrit avec Sandrina Jardel et coréalisé avec Antoine Delesvaux, César du meilleur film d'animation. Il réalise en ce moment son second long métrage d'animation « Petit Vampire » adapté de son œuvre avec comme partenaires Studiocanal et France TV et continue les collaborations avec ses différents éditeurs pour ses romans et bandes dessinées. S'il se définit lui-même comme un dessinateur compulsif qui ne passe pas un jour sans prendre son crayon, cet adepte d'un trait vivant jeté sur le papier est aussi un authentique écrivain. Car ce raconteur d'histoires accorde autant d'importance aux mots qu'aux images, aussi à l'aise devant ses planches que face à son écran d'ordinateur ou derrière une caméra. Penser le Présent est réalisé avec le soutien de Société Générale. Mercredi 14 décembre 2022 Amphithéâtre des Loges Crédit photo : © Droits réservés

For our Thursday review, film critic Leila Latif and art critic Ben Luke join Samira to discuss the much anticipated release of the Avatar sequel, The Way of Water and the exhibition of the late Polish artist Magdalena Abakanowicz: Every Tangle Of Thread And Rope at Tate Modern in London. The much-loved and much-celebrated illustrator and author Sir Quentin Blake will be 90 on December 16th. He is well known for his collaborations with Roald Dahl, Michael Rosen and many others as well as for his own stories such as Cockatoos and Mrs Armitage on Wheels. Fellow illustrators and writers Lauren Child and Axel Scheffler join Front Row to celebrate the work and influence of this distinctive artist as plans proceed to open The Quentin Blake Centre for Illustration in 2024. Image: courtesy of the Quentin Blake Centre for Illustration

En este episodio hablamos sobre las “Reglas de Oro” de la ilustración de Quentin Blake. Quizá conozcas a Quentin por sus ilustraciones para cuentos como Matilda, Charlie y la Fábrica de Chocolates, Fantastic Mr. Fox, entre otros.Nos clavamos en este grande de la ilustración editorial para sacar sus buenos consejos.

In her first-ever podcast interview, Vanessa Baird, one of Norway's most pre-eminent artists, speaks to Danielle Radojcin about her life's work. Taking inspiration from her daily routine at home with her family in Oslo, her drawings are at once darkly comic and profoundly relatable. Vanessa trained at the the Royal Academy in London under Quentin Blake, and is a winner of Norway's most important art prize, the Lorck Schive Kunstpris. She also designed the Nobel Peace prize diploma. She speaks openly about her inspirations, overcoming challenges, and finding kinship through her work with Karl Ove Knausgaard.

Book Vs. Movie: The Witches Roald Dahl's 1983 Children's Novel Vs. the 1990 Nicolas Roeg Cult Classic FilmThe Margos finish October's month of spooky books and movies with 1983's The Witches by Roald Dahl (a favorite of this podcast!) This is one of his last works before his death in 1990 and is based on his love for his mother, Sofie Dahl. Stephen Roxburgh edited the work, and Quentin Blake's illustrations received great praise at the time though the story was thought to be “misogynistic.” It's now known as a modern classic. The story of an unnamed boy who lives with his Norweigian grandmother after his parents are killed and learns about witches who are ALL female and eat children is---intense. He learns that witches all over the world behave differently and that his being sent to an English school might make him vulnerable to the Grand Vulnerable High Witch of All the World. The story has kids turning into mice, magic potions, wigs, pea soup, and so much more weirdness, and an ending that might be more off-putting than encouraging. Nicolas Roeg directed the 1990 film that was considered a box office disappointment because it had a different ending than the book (happier, which Dahl completely hated and should not be a surprise considering what we knew about him) but is now considered a classic. Between the 1983 novel and 1990--which did we like better? You have to listen to find out!!This episode is sponsored by Kensington Books and A Ghost in Shining Armor, the novel by Therese Beharrie.ROM-COM WITH A TOUCH OF MAGIC: This Cape Town-set rom-com is the second in a duology about two South African sisters who were separated as children when one was adopted and the other went into foster care. After reuniting as adults, they learn they've each developed unique abilities. The previous book focused on the sister who can manifest her dreams. This book revolves around Gemma, who can see and communicate with ghosts. FOR FANS OF: This #OwnVoices romantic comedy is ideal for fans of authors who have found success blending romance, comedy, and more weighty real-world issues, such as Jasmine Guillory, Abby Jimenez, Helen Hoang, & Alisha Rai. Readers who enjoy authors bringing new perspectives to the world of romance, such as Talia Hibbert and Erin Sterling will also be pleased. Once haunted . . . Gemma Daniels has never been quite the “down to earth” woman her adoptive parents raised her to be. She even has a unique gift: she can see ghosts and likes helping them settle their unfinished business. But the hotter-than-hot stranger she impulsively kisses on a bet is not only a phantom; he's determined to help her. And the only way Gemma can explain his presence is to pretend they're a real-life couple. Twice shy . . . Levi Walker lived—and died—to save his sister. Now he's got a second chance at life if he assists Gemma in reuniting with her long-lost sibling . . . and then never sees Gemma again. But as he starts to enjoy her irrepressible personality, he's finding it hard to abide by any rules at all . . . Gemma is thrilled to be getting to know her sister, but it causes a family rift she may be unable to heal. On top of that, she's falling for a ghost with a dilemma. Levi must decide what loyalty—and living—is truly all about. Gemma and Levi must risk being real with each other to fix their mistakes if they are ever to claim true love.Visit her online at Therese Beharrie and on Twitter @ThereseBeharrie.In this ep the Margos discuss:The life of Roald DahlThe plot of the story versus the 1990 filmThe controversy around the movie and why it is considered a classic filmThe cast: Anjelica Huston (Ena Ernst/The Grand High Witch,) Mai Zetterling (Helga Eveshim,) Jasen Fisher (Luke Eveshim,) Rowan Atkinson (Mr. Stringer,) Brenda Blethyn Mrs. Jenkins,) Charlie Potter (Bruno) and Jane Horrocks as Miss Susan Irvine. Clips used:“Maximum Results!!”The Witches 1990 trailer “Hello Little Bruno”The baby carriage sceneLuke becomes a mouseThey all eat the soupMusic by Stanley MyersBook Vs. Movie is part of the Frolic Podcast Network. Find more podcasts you will love Frolic.Media/podcasts. Join our Patreon page to help support the show! https://www.patreon.com/bookversusmovie Book Vs. Movie podcast https://www.facebook.com/bookversusmovie/Twitter @bookversusmovie www.bookversusmovie.comEmail us at bookversusmoviepodcast@gmail.com Margo D. @BrooklynFitChik www.brooklynfitchick.com brooklynfitchick@gmail.comMargo P. @ShesNachoMama https://coloniabook.weebly.com/ Our logo was designed by Madeleine Gainey/Studio 39 Marketing Follow on Instagram @Studio39Marketing & @musicalmadeleine

Book Vs. Movie: The Witches Roald Dahl's 1983 Children's Novel Vs. the 1990 Nicolas Roeg Cult Classic FilmThe Margos finish October's month of spooky books and movies with 1983's The Witches by Roald Dahl (a favorite of this podcast!) This is one of his last works before his death in 1990 and is based on his love for his mother, Sofie Dahl. Stephen Roxburgh edited the work, and Quentin Blake's illustrations received great praise at the time though the story was thought to be “misogynistic.” It's now known as a modern classic. The story of an unnamed boy who lives with his Norweigian grandmother after his parents are killed and learns about witches who are ALL female and eat children is---intense. He learns that witches all over the world behave differently and that his being sent to an English school might make him vulnerable to the Grand Vulnerable High Witch of All the World. The story has kids turning into mice, magic potions, wigs, pea soup, and so much more weirdness, and an ending that might be more off-putting than encouraging. Nicolas Roeg directed the 1990 film that was considered a box office disappointment because it had a different ending than the book (happier, which Dahl completely hated and should not be a surprise considering what we knew about him) but is now considered a classic. Between the 1983 novel and 1990--which did we like better? You have to listen to find out!!This episode is sponsored by Kensington Books and A Ghost in Shining Armor, the novel by Therese Beharrie.ROM-COM WITH A TOUCH OF MAGIC: This Cape Town-set rom-com is the second in a duology about two South African sisters who were separated as children when one was adopted and the other went into foster care. After reuniting as adults, they learn they've each developed unique abilities. The previous book focused on the sister who can manifest her dreams. This book revolves around Gemma, who can see and communicate with ghosts. FOR FANS OF: This #OwnVoices romantic comedy is ideal for fans of authors who have found success blending romance, comedy, and more weighty real-world issues, such as Jasmine Guillory, Abby Jimenez, Helen Hoang, & Alisha Rai. Readers who enjoy authors bringing new perspectives to the world of romance, such as Talia Hibbert and Erin Sterling will also be pleased. Once haunted . . . Gemma Daniels has never been quite the “down to earth” woman her adoptive parents raised her to be. She even has a unique gift: she can see ghosts and likes helping them settle their unfinished business. But the hotter-than-hot stranger she impulsively kisses on a bet is not only a phantom; he's determined to help her. And the only way Gemma can explain his presence is to pretend they're a real-life couple. Twice shy . . . Levi Walker lived—and died—to save his sister. Now he's got a second chance at life if he assists Gemma in reuniting with her long-lost sibling . . . and then never sees Gemma again. But as he starts to enjoy her irrepressible personality, he's finding it hard to abide by any rules at all . . . Gemma is thrilled to be getting to know her sister, but it causes a family rift she may be unable to heal. On top of that, she's falling for a ghost with a dilemma. Levi must decide what loyalty—and living—is truly all about. Gemma and Levi must risk being real with each other to fix their mistakes if they are ever to claim true love.Visit her online at Therese Beharrie and on Twitter @ThereseBeharrie.In this ep the Margos discuss:The life of Roald DahlThe plot of the story versus the 1990 filmThe controversy around the movie and why it is considered a classic filmThe cast: Anjelica Huston (Ena Ernst/The Grand High Witch,) Mai Zetterling (Helga Eveshim,) Jasen Fisher (Luke Eveshim,) Rowan Atkinson (Mr. Stringer,) Brenda Blethyn Mrs. Jenkins,) Charlie Potter (Bruno) and Jane Horrocks as Miss Susan Irvine. Clips used:“Maximum Results!!”The Witches 1990 trailer “Hello Little Bruno”The baby carriage sceneLuke becomes a mouseThey all eat the soupMusic by Stanley MyersBook Vs. Movie is part of the Frolic Podcast Network. Find more podcasts you will love Frolic.Media/podcasts. Join our Patreon page to help support the show! https://www.patreon.com/bookversusmovie Book Vs. Movie podcast https://www.facebook.com/bookversusmovie/Twitter @bookversusmovie www.bookversusmovie.comEmail us at bookversusmoviepodcast@gmail.com Margo D. @BrooklynFitChik www.brooklynfitchick.com brooklynfitchick@gmail.comMargo P. @ShesNachoMama https://coloniabook.weebly.com/ Our logo was designed by Madeleine Gainey/Studio 39 Marketing Follow on Instagram @Studio39Marketing & @musicalmadeleine

We're back for another Banned Book discussion about Roald Dahl's The Witches (1963) which we've partnered with Nicolas Roeg's 1990 adaptation, as well as tangential conversation about Robert Zemeckis' 2020 film. Thanks to listener Miriam for contributing!Yes, this book was banned...for promoting witchcraft, not Dahl's anti-semitism, which we have to discuss . It's such a shame because the book - with its willingness to put children in danger and its "grim dark" ending - is still great (bonus points for Quentin Blake's illustrations). Then the film is all about Anjelica Houston's Grand High Witch, cute Jim Henson mice, Roeg's POV camerawork and great practical FX.Wanna connect with the show? Follow us on Twitter @HKHSPod or use the hashtag #HKHSPod:> Brenna: @brennacgray> Joe: @bstolemyremoteHave something longer to say or a comment about banned book club? Email us at hkhspod@gmail.com or tweet us your responses before the following deadlines:> Nov 24: Lord of the Flies by William Golding (1954) / Peter Brook (1964)> Dec 20: All American Boys by Reynolds and Kiely (2015) Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Katie and Sally discuss "Miss Don't Touch Me" by Hubert and Kerascoët (2014, NBM ComicsLit). Topics discussed include Quentin Blake, Edmond Kiraz, The Hours, Schiaparelli, A Little Princess, Beautiful Darkness, Josephine Baker, and more. Special thanks to Drawn & Quarterly for sponsoring this episode. Our Canadian friends can take 40% off Dan Clowes's "The Death Ray" (coming soon on a special Patreon episode) by visiting mtl.drawnandquarterly.com and using code ThickLinesDeathRay at checkout. Support Thick Lines and get bonus episodes at patreon.com/thicklinespod, and follow us on Instagram @thicklinespod.

Brian Abram is 64 and lives in Halifax. In 2013 he survived a horrific cycling accident that left him paralysed and a full-time wheelchair user.  After weeks in a coma and a year in hospital he returned home to a very different life. He then wrote a silly story to amuse his grandson, who was just 6 months old when he had his accident.  Encouraged by others, (including Quentin Blake who said, “It's an impressive piece of work,”) he self-published his first book in 2019.  Two years later there are now four books.  He now spends his time doing lots of school visits to raise awareness about disability and to show kids that being in a wheelchair, is no barrier to having fun.Everything he makes is donated to charities that help people who have suffered a spinal injury like me. So far, he's raised just over £28,000 for the Spinal Injuries Association and Back Up Some key points from our interview:·        How he recognises that his body might have been broken physically inn his accident, but mentally he remains unbroken·        How his uses his positivity that he inherited from his mother and dark humour to help him·        How he met the woman who saved his life in the most extraordinary way·        How he first decided to write a children's book for his grandson to explain why he was different to other Grandads ·        How he's now passionate about sharing his story in schools to raise awareness of life in a wheelchair and more importantly the fun he can still have“Nothing is forever; be patient” – Brian Abram You can get more info about Brian and his books here: www.grandadwheels.com You can read his personal blog here: www.thestrifeofbrian.com Hosted by Madeleine Black, the show will share stories of all the amazing people Madeleine has met on her own journey as an author/speaker and these stories will heal, motivate, inspire and bring hope when they share their wisdom and knowledge with her.She really believes in the power that comes when we share our stories, that in fact we are not story tellers but story healers. Tune in to discover what helped them to stay unbroken and together we will discover that none of us are broken beyond repair.You can find out more about Madeleine, her story and her memoir, Unbroken,  from her website: https://madeleineblack.co.uk/Watch via YouTube:https://www.youtube.com/c/MadeleineBlackUnbroken 

Emma Chichester Clark is one of the UK's foremost illustrators. She has published well over 60 books for children including her own very popular Blue Kangaroo series as well as stand-alone picture books and illustrated books for other writers.Emma studied graphic design at Chelsea School of Art in the 1970s and then later studied illustration at the Royal College of Art where Quentin Blake was her tutor. Her former mentor remains a good friend. In 1988, Emma was awarded the Mother Goose Award for best newcomer in children's books illustrationsIn this episode, Emma talks to Nikki Gamble about her book Mister Toots.About Mister TootsWhen Bella opens her front door and finds an other-wordly, little stranger on the doorstep, her life changes forever! Cold, hungry and lost, the only word the stranger can say is 'Toot!', so Bella and her children, name him Mister Toots, before giving him something to eat and a comfy bed. Soon Mister Toots becomes a much-loved member of the family and neighbourhood.But one terrible day, he disappears into the sky... Will anyone ever see him again? Beautifully illustrated, this poignant, moving story about the power of kindness and compassion, and accepting and welcoming others, will touch the hearts of adults and children alike.

Photograph courtesy of Nong V

Angelo by Quentin Blake - Read by Martyn KennethThis was previously released in September 2020 but has had only 3 listeners in 30 days so I have re uploaded it for you tonight!

Sara Saorin, Francesca Segato"Camelozampa"https://www.camelozampa.com/Camelozampa è una casa editrice di libri per ragazzi, albi illustrati e narrativa dalle prime letture fino ai giovani adulti.Il 3 ottobre 2011 usciva Potterologia, il primo titolo di Camelozampa, una nuova avventura editoriale nata da due piccole case editrici. Da allora, abbiamo pubblicato decine di nuovi libri, portato per la prima volta sugli scaffali grandissimi autori e illustratori e imperdibili titoli fino ad allora dimenticati della letteratura per ragazzi. Abbiamo tessuto reti, incontrato persone straordinarie, che scrivono, disegnano, leggono, continuano a inventare nuovi modi per far incontrare la lettura ai ragazzi. Oggi Camelozampa, festeggia i suoi primi dieci anni di libri!Camelozampa è una casa editrice indipendente nata nel 2011 e specializzata in picture book e narrativa per bambini e ragazzi, fino a giovani adulti. Produce libri di qualità, prestando grande attenzione a ogni aspetto, dai contenuti ai materiali (con l'utilizzo ad esempio di carta in fibra di mais o certificata FSC). Tra i suoi punti di forza la riscoperta di capolavori internazionali della letteratura per ragazzi, mai arrivati prima in Italia o finiti troppo presto fuori catalogo: tra questi, i titoli di Quentin Blake, Anthony Browne, Jimmy Liao, Tomi Ungerer, Marie-Aude Murail, Guus Kujer e molti altri. A queste riscoperte affianca un lavoro di scouting per dare spazio alla creatività di autori e illustratori italiani, emergenti o già affermati. Dal 2018 Camelozampa è una casa editrice ad alta leggibilità. Camelozampa è vincitrice del BOP 2020 Bologna Prize for the Best Children's Publishers of the Year per l'Europa.Sara Saorin, laureata alla Scuola Interpreti e Traduttori di Bologna, è co-fondatrice di Camelozampa, per la quale ha tradotto i romanzi di Marie-Aude Murail, Christophe Léon, Christian Bobin, Alexandre Jardin e numerosi albi di autori come Michael Foreman, Quentin Blake e Anthony Browne.Continua a lavorare come traduttrice, soprattutto in ambito scientifico-divulgativo, e per Camelozampa anima le collane “I draghi” (saggistica sul fantastico) e “Gli arcobaleni” (narrativa per pre-adolescenti).Giornalista e scrittrice, vive e lavora nella zona dei Colli Euganei.Tra i fondatori di Zampanera Editore, poi confluita in Camelozampa, da anni tiene laboratori di lettura animata e scrittura creativa per bambini.IL POSTO DELLE PAROLEascoltare fa pensarehttps://ilpostodelleparole.it/

Fantastic Mr Fox Chapter 3 | Roald Dahl Children's Story Read Aloud Fantastic Mr Fox is a children's novel written by British author Roald Dahl. It was published in 1970 in US. The first U.K. Puffin paperback, first issued in 1974 Later editions have featured illustrations by Tony Ross (1988) and Quentin Blake (1996). https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fantastic_Mr_Fox

Fancy a trip to the seaside? Well join me and my guest as we chat about the artistic Fun 'n Frolics we enjoyed at Hastings Contemporary Seaside Modern exhibition. We spent a couple of hours down in Hastings Rock A Nore in the company of Quentin Blake, TS Lowry and Eric Ravilious. Give yourselves a treat and feast your ears on the delights of this Seaside Modern exhibition with me, your host Deirdre O'Connell. Afterwards we enjoyed a well earned slice of home-made lemon drizzle cake on the cafe balcony as we savoured the delights of the exhibition and the higgeldy-piggledy Rock A Nore view. Enjoy Dee.

Quentin Blake's colouring-in failures, the fireplace precedent, Roald Dahl's big sandal, and more.Join the Iron Filings Society: https://www.patreon.com/topflighttimemachine See acast.com/privacy for privacy and opt-out information.

By Dr. Seuss Pictures by Quentin Blake

Becoming a children's author and illustrator (part 2): The legendary children's author Julia Donaldson & new children's author and illustrator Ted Chaplin talk to We'd Like A Word presenters Paul Waters and Stevyn Colgan about how to create really good stories for young readers. Julia is the former Children's Laureate and the author of A Squash And A Squeeze, The Gruffalo, The Smartest Giant in Town, Stickman and more than a hundred books read by and to children, again and again and again. Many of them illustrated by Axel Scheffler. Now Julia is curating an online course to pass on her advice - and the advice of other experts - to other people who would like to become children's authors. It's under the auspices of the BBC Maestro series. You can find more details by following this link https://www.bbcmaestro.com/courses/julia-donaldson/writing-children-s-picture-books - 27 lessons lasting 6.5 hours, costing £80 In the meantime, Julia some surprising revelations for We'd Like A Word listeners. But what about Ted Chaplin - he's been at the top of the movie animation tree for a long time - working Farmageddon (Shaun the Sheep), Early Man, the Pirates in an Adventure with Scientists, Captain Scarlet, and Indiana Jones and the Crystal Skull (but it wasn't his fault - if you've seen the film, you'll know what we mean). But now he's moving into writing and illustrating children's picture stories. It's been more than a year since presenters Paul and Stevyn have been able to get together face-to-face to interview a guest - due to covid - but in this episode we meet in Ted Chaplin's workshop, (which is a lot tidier looking than Steve's, I can tell you). We see Ted's work-in-progress - including a very very cute sloth-like creature. We also talk about Jed Mercurio, The Scarecrow's Wedding, Korky Paul, Strictly Come Dancing and the Great British Bake-Off, Sussex Wildlife Trust, Wolly Bear Caterpillar, the Gruffalo, Princess Mirabelle, the Beth and Ginny stories, The Hobbit, The Wind in the Willows, Hamnett by maggie O'Farrell, Scopp by Evelyn Waugh, Indiana Jones and the Crystal Skull, Brian Blessed, The Pirates in an Adventure with Scientists, Aardman Animation, The Imaginarium and Andy Serkis, the Highway Rat, David Tennant, Axel Scheffler, secret codes in movie making, Doctor Who and Star Wars, The Postscript Murders by Elly Griffiths, The Thursday Murder Club by Richard Osman, Rockabye Rumpus, Oi Frog by Kes Gray, Running on the Cracks, Enid Blyton, Kenneth Grahame, Richmal Crompton's Just William books, The Borrowers, E Nesbit, Judith Kerr, Quentin Blake, Raymond Briggs, smashing a Blue Peter trophy, Pride and Prejudice, favourite writing or drawing implements, Mr Men, Spot the Dog, Captain Scarlet, Cat Deeley, Black Panther, the Hulk, Ant and Dec, bums and farts, a Kookaburra and Faber pencils. We'd Like A Word is a podcast & radio show from authors Paul Waters & Stevyn Colgan. We talk with writers, readers, editors, agents, celebrities, talkers, poets, publishers, booksellers, audiobook creators about books - fiction & non-fiction. We go out on various radio & podcast platforms. Our website is www.wedlikeaword.com - which is where you'll find information about Paul & Steve & our guests. We're also on Twitter @wedlikeaword & Facebook @wedlikeaword & our email is wedlikeaword@gmail.com - & yes, we are slightly embarrassed by the missing apostrophes. We like to hear from you - your questions, thoughts, ideas, guest or book suggestions. Perhaps you'd like to come on We'd Like A Word in person, to chat, review, meet writers or read out passages from books. And if you're still stuck for something to read, may we recommend Blackwatertown by Paul Waters or The Diabolical Club by Stevyn Colgan.

Welcome to our first lockdown podcast! And forgive us for our imperfect audio sins, but boy do we have a bumper catch up on our hands. We kick off with some virtual viewing reviews: Picasso on Paper, Andy Warhol at the Tate Modern, Quentin Blake at Hastings Contemporary, Google Arts and Culture Tours, and the Virtual Viewing Rooms at Frieze New York. And to feed the lockdown boredom, we have a feast of documentary suggestions, and some creative inspiration courtesy of the The Artist Support Pledge and The Isolation Art School. Believe it or not, but there are news stories in the art world that have nothing to do with Covid-19, and we found two of them. We discuss the controversial plans to demolish the buildings that host Picasso's murals in Oslo, and reviews of the 2020 BP Portrait Award winner and why people fixate on her label as a 'self taught' artist. This episode's Artist Focus is war artist Paul Nash. Best known for his striking modernist landscapes of the trenches, Nash was an official war artist in both World Wars. We discuss the changes in his works between the two wars, how witnessing death and destruction influenced his work, and his inter-war experimentation in Surrealism. SHOW NOTESPicasso on Paper at the Royal Academy: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oOOY6GbV9KsAndy Warhol at the Tate Modern: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZjgAd6Z-dd0Quentin Blake ‘We live in worrying times' at Hastings Contemporary: https://www.hastingscontemporary.org/exhibition/quentin-blake-we-live-in-worrying-times/Google Arts and Culture Tours: https://artsandculture.google.com/story/10-top-museums-you-can-explore-right-here-right-now/igKSKBBnEBSGKgThe Virtual Viewing Room at Frieze New York: https://frieze.com/fairs/frieze-viewing-roomBecoming Matisse documentary: https://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/m000hqt7Lee Miller - A Life on the Front Line documentary: https://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/m000hy2pThe Artist Support Pledge: visit @artistsupportpledge on Instagram The Isolation Art School: visit @isolationartschool on Instagram Grayson's Art Club on Channel 4: https://www.channel4.com/programmes/graysons-art-club The Cel del Nord Virtual Residency: https://celdelnord.com/virtual-residencyPicasso's Murals in Oslo are at the Centre of a Major Controversy: https://www.architecturaldigest.com/story/picasso-murals-oslo-major-controversyJiab Prachakul - Will Gompertz reviews BP Portrait Award Winner: https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/entertainment-arts-52592969Paul Nash, The Landscape of Modernism, film: https://henitalks.com/talks/paul-nash-the-landscape-of-modernism/Review: Propaganda, Power and Persuasion at the British Library: https://www.independent.co.uk/arts-entertainment/art/reviews/exhibition-review-propaganda-power-and-persuasion-british-library-london-8632201.html

“It's about time” is the tagline for the new Doctor Who series, referencing the programme's time-travelling exploits, but also the arrival of the first female Doctor in the show's history. Jodie Whittaker will be the 13th Doctor and tells us how she's tackling a role with so much history, attention and anticipation around it.Haruki Murakami's novels are awaited by eager audiences not just in his native Japan but the world over. Killing Commendatore is his latest and it delivers all the things his readers have come to expect: brushes with the supernatural, an almost audible soundtrack and a narrator who's lost his way. How successful is it? Critic Alex Clark reviews and analyses the Murakami phenomenon.Quentin Blake, one of the world's best loved illustrators, takes us around the first ever exhibition dedicated to his figurative art. Featuring large-scale oil paintings and drawings it reveals a more experimental side to his practice. Blake explains how this darker, more serious work emerged.Presenter: Stig Abell Producer: Hannah Robins

The Turner Prize-winning artist, writer and Reith lecturer Grayson Perry discusses his new show The Most Popular Art Exhibition Ever! at the Serpentine Gallery in London. The new works on display include tapestries, ceramics and sculptures, many of which reflect Perry's engagement with politics, the state of Britain, sex and religion.Front Row announces and talks to the winner of this year's Baileys Prize for Women's Fiction live from the ceremony.Just ten days before her death, Helen Dunmore wrote a poem for her friends. Samantha Bond reads Hold Out Your Arms.At a ceremony in the UK Capital of Culture Hull earlier today, Lauren Child was named The Waterstone's Children's Laureate. The creator of the hugely popular Charlie and Lola, Clarice Bean and That Pesky Rat books is the tenth writer to hold the title and joins the likes of Chris Riddell, Anne Fine and one of her own heroes Quentin Blake. Lauren, who wants to promote creativity in young people during her two year tenure, will be talking to John Wilson live.Would you be more likely to go to the theatre or a concert if you were allowed to pay whatever you liked? John talks to Annabel Turpin of the Stockton Arts Centre, who has done just that for her theatre goers, and discusses with Jane Donald of the Royal Scottish National Orchestra whether it would work for them. Presenter: John Wilson Producer: Rebecca Armstrong.

Kirsty Young's first castaway is one of our most popular illustrators, Quentin Blake. His work is immediately recognisable and is full of energy, anarchy and joy. An award-winning author in his own right, he is best known for his long collaboration with the author Roald Dahl. In the same way that it is impossible to think of Alice in Wonderland without imagining Tenniel's solemn drawings, when one imagines Charlie and the Chocolate Factory or James and the Giant Peach it is invariably Quentin Blake's pictures that spring to mind. As a child growing up in the London suburbs he was self-contained, quiet and serious. Family friends remember that he didn't say much - but that he always loved drawing. His cartoons were first published in Punch when he was 16, making him one of its youngest ever contributors, but after graduating from Cambridge and training as a teacher, he decided his future lay not in one-off sketches for magazines, but in book illustration. He was named the first ever Children's Laureate in 1999 and in 2005 was awarded the CBE. He lives in London and continues to work towards the establishment of a museum celebrating the history and techniques of illustration.[Taken from the original programme material for this archive edition of Desert Island Discs] Favourite track: String Quartet No 2 - Intimate Letters by Janácek Book: Collected Works by Charles Dickens Luxury: Arches watercolour paper