Here's what children's books and plastic in the ocean have to do with each other - Children and Books

00:00:00: Music.

00:00:06: Hello and welcome to the children and books podcast.

00:00:10: Today I will have a special guest at the tenant office and she's an artist and designer maybe you want to introduce yourself.

00:00:18: Yes a designer and illustrator

00:00:22: have worked illustrating writing children's books as well as commercial work for over 35 years and everyone from a three-year-old up to a 99 year old design students

00:00:36: everything that I mostly make my selfies from the thrown away and found lost and found and made to teach is always to try into something difficult in an extraordinary and inspiring way so it's about having lots of play final performance

00:00:55: so as to how I've never had a business card creative creature but these days it's easier if I call myself artist design

00:01:08: that sort of yeah yeah

00:01:13: hello Hannah hello I'm very happy that you are with us and I have got the question because you said you made a lot of childrenbooks how did you decide

00:01:26: yes I like to and it'll straight it did you take every book you get or did you say all this I love there is there coming ideas to me.

00:01:40: I'm the daughter of a bookbinder so we'll rather rephrase that my mother was a bit behind it and I've grown up with

00:01:49: the world of print and illustration and design really from my childhood and been exposed to seeing.

00:02:00: Illustrator as well and seeing how text and images put together however I never really was going to go down this path but in the old days of the 80s

00:02:10: lots of gin and tonics at the Chelsea and meet various people casually and there was lots of money but it was because I was magazine

00:02:23: years ago out of paper and cutting and sticking.

00:02:32: There's a lovely Dutch phrase called

00:02:35: what is the current stick and I became the cut and stick Queen and I did these illustrations which was sort of showing

00:02:44: you make something without doing the classic step-by-step how to do he's a non-fiction books and the new because they're all photographs.

00:02:55: And mostly 2-dimensional and they asked if over many genes we said there's so many ideas let's create a series of books started a whole new imprint and title

00:03:11: which had started with a children's magazine called John and it grew and grew like things did when there was that money around.

00:03:19: Opportunity and I did 15 titles with paper print 3D collage.

00:03:26: Reduced friend of mine who did more of the science side and then his wife to the knitting and the textile side

00:03:37: a friend of mine who is a photographer photographed it or and there was very small text because I was supposed to the step-by-step I felt that.

00:03:46: Those types of children's books in the 70s for to old-fashioned so my thoughts years ago my photographic and have multi textures.

00:04:01: And faithful

00:04:02: directive cos I really feel at children there's not just an ABC we're doing things and there's not a right or wrong.

00:04:11: I was always trying to say electric possibilities because any interpretation is a great.

00:04:18: Response better quite a while to get through but it did and that's what I've continued through doing.

00:04:25: And then one another yeah I ended up being getting quite cross with publishers with the same because they're not that many visionaries out there and

00:04:36: I used to write treatments and go round two New York to Paris to London and to the Frankfurt book fair to present ideas

00:04:44: because that's how it works which is ridiculous but it's at work and then your treatment proposal would sit on somebody's desk for about 9 months and then you realise there's only editors in the world at the time

00:05:00: is there what's difference between burgers and mine when I felt quite passionate about it though because my Ben partner is also a designer and he was very

00:05:10: early in digital design etc.

00:05:16: Very long time to books ourselves and starting in myself.

00:05:21: Which was now I think about it because but I said meet you if you're very early started

00:05:28: to make books on your own yes I I think I moved to Holland when you are a kind of pioneer in many case

00:05:41: is serendipity it's yes I am and I think.

00:05:52: I was at had quite a few people say that I was quite ahead of my time example when I set up my zebra at children's character.

00:06:02: I wanted to do a non traditional beginning middle and end book and I wanted to have some B and a size and always about nature.

00:06:12: You didn't talk that was and he was treated and college and hand drawn but the idea was to have nature facts around it so that didn't exist they didn't the publishing houses you like

00:06:24: fiction and non-fiction mixing we have to have separate lists and it

00:06:28: very very basically didn't have merchandising did not know about marketing their design was very much laid in this country to the editorial and the words that.

00:06:40: May I say it a little fashion traditional where is the Spanish and the Americans were very funky and doing great stuff so there was.

00:06:51: I got it right through CBBC to do some animations.

00:06:56: And a whole series but those days it was still considered

00:07:01: out because it was collage and it wasn't done on the computer and it wasn't this fiction non-fiction so it's still to This Day on.

00:07:12: Well we still published it but I haven't properly published him but today against somebody said why don't you restart again because he's all there and he still fresh and it's funny.

00:07:22: The funny thing that we promised him and Dutch to a newspaper HEPA role and to a great visionary and I believe you have to have some luck meetings and visionary

00:07:32: is never too short for some it's a hard slog it's a lot of work.

00:07:42: Yeah it's and it's all about distribution it's not as one knows.

00:07:49: I think it is half and half one thing is to make this book you like you love it and the others the other parties have marketing

00:07:58: well I think it's even more I think it's 10% creativity 90% my pocketing and my head doesn't do that very well I never have the energy to do if you can get somebody else to do

00:08:13: lets go back to your role as a Pioneer it's a moment of what's new thing or discovering it's a moment.

00:08:22: At the very moment I'm rediscovering the seashore and that after

00:08:29: working on the plastics washed up here

00:08:32: 11 years because I was so passionate about arts in schools being more again giving a variety

00:08:47: of response try and help with visual language

00:08:51: and show possibilities and I've just found a presentation today and I'm going to resurrect it based around the seashore because I think within this climate.

00:09:04: It's about getting more more children interested and where abouts are coastline in it and underneath it

00:09:12: and even where we live is right on the see I've just been talking to people who also don't know what's in it and.

00:09:21: Do I think that's and that's a continuation from the plastics project really.

00:09:26: Picking up plastics for well over 11 years in 1993 in Australia where do you pick it up.

00:09:37: Well in the last 11 years I moved from Amsterdam from a city to the sea and that's really

00:09:43: concept itself and your Horizons literally change so my moved to the head of a lock here on the west coast of Scotland which is totally you can't see anything but when I moved it was where the sea and sky meet it

00:10:01: totally different Horizon to the urban street in Amsterdam I lived on a canal and I had watch.

00:10:07: Being full of plastics and trash for a few years

00:10:12: documented the hens that live on the canals and I thought that was normal I didn't know

00:10:23: cheeseburger actually build their nests in Leeds so that was experienced to understand but when I moved from the city to the sea.

00:10:33: So I been used to beach cleans and our community here many years before is only when it's on your own daughter.

00:10:43: Negative

00:10:46: it's in your faces and it's blowing into my vegetable patch it's everywhere and then the first three years I move there with these incredible storms

00:10:54: is about a metre high of plastics and it was it was a poorly and because I like plastic colour because I'm a colour creature

00:11:07: I was fascinated and started a little game for myself picking up Orange one day and blue another rent

00:11:16: because I document everything and a lot of children's books about I wouldn't just draw 1 fish.

00:11:26: Collect different types of fish from a sardine tin to a plastic fish to a material give all the senses so I started collecting by colour and then

00:11:37: this is a really crucial and easily forgotten and I met up with the 7-year old.

00:11:46: And she said so bored of you making so many problems that we have to solve on anymore.

00:11:57: I'm going to make this fun I'm going to try and make each please

00:12:02: fun but also creates imagery to try to inspire about awareness and that's exactly where this whole project began.

00:12:13: Then I got obsessed and then I haven't stopped and.

00:12:19: And how you make fan from the beach cleaning that's a good question and lots of people say

00:12:25: the thing is surely making something terrible out of all this plastic in our oceans into something beautiful or fun is wrong now.

00:12:36: In 2009 iconic picture of the

00:12:40: Albatross chicks with their plastic in their bellies on the Midway at all photographs

00:12:49: at the same time I've moved that year and I just thought.

00:12:54: It was a time I did a lot of research and I found out about the plastic supergiants and I kept telling people though hermaphrodite alligators here and there and everywhere the plastic leaching.

00:13:07: However many photographs of dead animals you see it doesn't seem to solve anything so I thought well I'm not a wildlife photographer.

00:13:17: I'm going to make something so bright and colourful and context to get your attention and that's exactly.

00:13:25: What did because people even here.

00:13:32: Then I grew cos I couldn't stop collecting and couldn't stop making

00:13:38: Kinks is labelled really all along the west coast Scotland and I started making

00:13:44: to make a book really to try and show this process to children

00:13:49: actually it's quite difficult stuff to make with because it's scruffy and dirty and it's never the same he's twice so you've got to find another way in.

00:14:00: To making with.

00:14:02: And that was my process really my own created Discovery to explore how to bring it alive

00:14:10: and I was very lucky I had a very big studio to store it all in and my mother said every bit of domestic.

00:14:17: Plastic and the village did they use to put it in a big bin by the village

00:14:21: stop and add wash it out and dry it and start using it and because my brother is a professional photographer and very generous I used to take it to the east coast and Adam and he photographed it all on white.

00:14:36: And by elevating these artworks if you like on to White.

00:14:41: Specific photographs so I could eventually bring them up to like 6m big outside buildings and railings and make it public

00:14:50: for The History Museum to science centers the galleries to try and get it on the street back in the city's so I have a huge huge library of images.

00:15:04: Had but still I couldn't get funding and couldn't get people's attention

00:15:13: I did apply for very big grants to go to around Scotland to creatively muppet but I didn't get it so then I went to Australia

00:15:24: again your Horizons change and I ended up on these beautiful beaches but I know

00:15:29: didn't find any plastic bits but of course what it happens and it was a brilliant brilliant lesson is that all the big stuff that we get here like the big bottles and crates and big stuff is their ground down

00:15:43: through the movement of the tidal wave and all the sand to tiny microelements going through on the white sands on the post and going to the east Coast on the Yellow Sands

00:15:58: collecting microplastics.

00:16:00: But because it was warm and very nice to do and then of course I thought I had to change the name of the project which I had called.

00:16:11: Plastic c but it was a bit heavy so my father is a copywriter gave me the name let's go to the beach and that became a way to come back yeah.

00:16:22: And the whole idea was to come up with an educator creative education Legacy that's really what I was doing it

00:16:31: and I couldn't get any of the publishers to take it on because in London I didn't know what was going on I mean this is even 8 years ago they didn't know

00:16:40: didn't get it so then I thought how can I find this myself.

00:16:45: I couldn't stop so we did a crap on the Kickstarter project and my own designs onto surrounds.

00:16:57: To make the information accessible and fun and playful for the whole holiday maker and interestingly it was mostly the grannies and the aunties and the mums who are buying for their kids

00:17:09: but also the use of 20 + got it and that started again to do that to get the box.

00:17:18: But haven't got together that then got the money.

00:17:24: Back to produce the book we self-published a 6.

00:17:29: 590 pages which is quite big but it's really showing the process yeah and then we just launched.

00:17:40: Yeah I'm sorry I would say we could talk now for hours

00:17:47: to go on with it it is totally interested into this for us adults to got aware of it what we what we give to the children.

00:17:57: Which will come later which words we left them and I think just project like you do just Pioneers like you are very important

00:18:08: to to show to take the to show what happens thank you Mary

00:18:15: great thing to hear thank you because you don't forget that much reactional encouragement when you're doing it on your own it is a bit yeah it's important that you get directions via very happy that you are an hour podcast that you let me make it a bit more wear a little bit

00:18:37: children are our teachers and the kids will write to you in the school here and then the Communities are now 20

00:18:47: and they are the ones that say to their parents don't buy that they might think I won't go in a bottle

00:18:54: yeah and I think this is a very good

00:19:00: last question as we need to stop now and listen to your children what do they say about the plastic about the world about the nature what is happening.

00:19:11: Listen to them up absolutely thank you Hannah thank you so much that you have been with us we will put the

00:19:20: to your homepage then you can get more informations I think goodbye to all our listeners order and everyday she of a while that's why I don't know.

00:19:33: Music.