Back in the room!!

The last few weeks were a total treat after two years of remote live illustration jobs only! I am very grateful to my various commissioners including the University of Bristol, Great Ormond Street Hospital, StART Entrepreneurship Project and Barbican who took me on an amazing tour of some of the most exciting venues in England:

• People’s Republic of Stokes Croft, Bristol

• MShed, Bristol

• The Shard, London

• Royal Nothern School of Music, Manchester

• Barbican, London

The discussions and presentations were all equally powerful, emotional and inspiring. I couldn’t have dreamed of a better welcome-back in the room tour!

Two out of three events were digital live illustration, which still seem to be the trend even for in-person events. I am wondering if this will carry on or if we will observe a shift back to the Posca murals? Whilst I am still very much a markers-lover, I do appreciate the versatility of the digital canvas, its durability and support towards more eco-friendly practices.

How is YOUR journey back in the room?

Live drawing on the windows of the Shard for GOSH

Photo credits @Ash Knotek

Yesterday evening was a very special sunset seeing. I had the honour to take part in the wonderful Great Ormond Street Hospital’s private launch for their new forthcoming campaign. This time my canvas was a bit different: I got to live draw on five windows of the Shard in London!! The whole series can’t be revealed yet but I am allowed to share these few teasers, a timeline of the history of children’s cancer care at GOSH.

Thank you to the amazing team at GOSH for a truly fantastic experience.

Live illustration or the art of multitasking

A little insight into my live illustration process with this timeline - this discussion lasted a bit more than an hour. Before a live job, I always prepare a Procreate canvas in advance with various layers: template background, logos, layout, titles, sketching, colours and outline. When the event kicks off I start sketching straight away - I won’t necessarily keep everything in the end, but it helps me getting into the dynamic. At the same time I sketch/write down key thoughts and ideas on my sketchbook in case my Procreate canvas is too busy. At the end of the event, I turn off the layout and sketch layers, and I proceed to potential edits. And… voilà!

Timeline: extract from the Creative Producers Network, a project between Watershed, CSSD, Das Graduate School and the Kibii Foundation

Working with Creative Industries

As physical events start to become more regular, I travelled to London last week to the beautiful Wellcome Collection museum. The team at Sensing Spaces of Healthcare organised a workshop with academics from across the country and a range of subject on working with creative industries. Culture& CEO Errol Francis led a session prompting the audience to explore how they could collaborate with creatives in specific situations and spaces of research. I was very honoured to capture their thoughts and ideas with live illustration and sketchnotes.

StART Linking Up: Creative Industries Insights

This March I had the pleasure to collaborate with StART Linking Up: Creative Industries Insights, and scribe a series of talks for students from University of the Arts London, Royal Northern College of Music and The Royal Central School of Speech and Drama to connect with entrepreneurs and leading voices from the creative industries. I was very lucky to live illustrate extremely inspiring sessions led by the wonderful Muchaneta Kapfunde, Cindy Claes and Strange Fruits sharing their experiences and creative journeys.

Access and Active Leisure in a Time of Pandemic: Tales of Two Cities

I recently worked on an illustration series for the new podcast Access and Active Leisure in a Time of Pandemic, a project revealing parallel stories of active leisure during the pandemic in Bristol & in Bordeaux. Led by Professor Martin Hurcombe at the University of Bristol and Josephine Gyasi at Knowle West Media Centre, this project was funded by the Brigstow Institute. Read more about the project here and listen to the episodes here.

LIVE ILLUSTRATION EXPANDED

These past 6 months, I have been working on Live Illustration Expanded, a R&D project gratefully supported by an Arts Council DYCP grant. Information and recording of that project are available here.

It will culminate by a Pervasive Media Studio Lunchtime Talk on Friday 29th October. You can book your free ticket here to attend online or in person.

THE WORKSHOP MAGAZINE

The Workshop Magazine is a zine based on the brilliant Plot Workshop Workshop, which teaches you how to design and facilitate great online workshops. The live illustrations I produced during one of their sessions have been redeveloped in this beautiful edition. In a world where most event have switched to digital, facilitators need to learn and to adapt to this new environment. This magazine is filled with tips and examples from the best in this domain.

OUR OTHER MOTHER

I was very pleased to be appointed by Mothers Rise Up and Our Kids Climate to create illustrations for their campaign #OurOtherMother. The group was celebrating mums and planet earth around UK Mothers’ Day as the UK is slowly coming out of lockdown. Mothers are exhausted and so is our mother earth. Yet campaigning falls on the same shoulders and adds to the emotional/maternal load. Through these illustrations I wanted to give all mums a rest.

LA CABANE

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I recently collaborated with Parisian architecture studio Secousses and created an illustrated signage for their beautiful project La Cabane. The visual needed to reflect the collaborative and ecological aspect of the project. I created a mix of architectural illustration and scribing visual to explain the journey of each main material. Secousses wanted the signage to be engraved onto wood, which was very new for me! The illustration needed to be vector-based in order to be laser-cut by Wecut.

As all my projects at the moment this was made remotely so I am looking forward to seeing the plate in person when I will be able to travel to France again!

WOMEN'S HEALTH & EMERGING COMPLEMENTARY THERAPIES

I was very honoured to scribe this seminar on Women’s Health and complementary therapies curated and chaired by Dr Yewande Okuleye. The event also explored the link with CBD and included talks from Kathryn Vere, Pat Duckworth and Bukola as well as beautiful and powerful spoken words from Poetess Jess. I am so grateful for this shared, safe space of knowledge and experiences. The live illustrations are now going to be turned into a comic strip incarnating and celebrating women’s health.

ACROSS THE ROOM ANNOUNCEMENT

I am vey pleased to announce that I have teamed up with the fabulous Imwen Eke and Takita Bartlett as the collective Across the Room and that we have been selected as a recipient of the Pervasive Media Studio’s Future Themes fund for our first project: Ethno Augmenting Social Realities. We are exploring how to create multi-user tools for cultural relevance in physical and digital spaces to produce more inclusive experiences. I will look at developing an enhanced live illustration practice to expand the possibilities of virtual facilitation.

Rendez-vous to our lunchtime talk on the 30th October to find out more!

FLOURISHING IN MEDICINE

How might we enable people to flourish at work and personally during COVID? This was the provocation that started Flourishing in Medicine, a symposium that took place on the 3rd September and that I was very honoured to live illustrate. Organised by Dr Louise Younie , this virtual event gathered GPs, medical students, health consultants, pharmacists who discussed the importance of flourishing instead of resilience in their practice.

A TRACE OF EXQUISITE CORPSE

My series of live illustration performances EXQUISITE CORPSE took place in August on YouTube. You can see the three episodes on replay here.

This print is the merging on paper of the three virtual performances and incorporates QR codes leading to the replay of the performances. In my journey to develop my live illustration practice through the help of creative technologies I am interested to explore what stays after a performance, what traces of an event we can imagine to go beyond a nice visual shared on Instagram. This is a first attempt to answer the question. The print can be purchased here.

EXQUISITE CORPSE

I’m pleased to introduce Exquisite Corpse, a series of three virtual live illustration performances taking place at the end of August. You can book your free ticket here.

Through this series of short live illustration performances, I want to give the audience a moment of peace and quiet, perhaps even a meditative experience. The liveness of the performance will bring people to the heart of my drawing process, triggering a range of emotions that I hope will be liberating.

Carefully curated to ambient soundscapes, EXQUISITE CORPSE invites you to a playful, quirky but relaxing experience on the last three Mondays of August:

Monday 17th August, 8-8.15 pm: HEAD

Monday 24th August, 8-8.15 pm: TORSO

Monday 31st August, 8-8.15 pm: LEGS (and reveal!)

The performances will take place on my new YouTube channel. Please subscribe, click like and share if you feel able, I am appreciative of your support!

This activity is gratefully supported by a grant from Arts Council England Emergency Respond Fund for individuals.

IT'S ALL IN THE DETAILS

I was very pleased to collaborate with the Paris-based architecture practice Secousses and created this series of illustrations for a community space project in the Parisian suburbs. They wanted me to bring a cartoon twist to their interior design refurbishment of this beautiful Art Deco building. Their aim was to highlight the people and the way they could make this space their own. Thanks Secousses!

IN SUPPORT OF BLACK LIVES MATTER

Edited 29/06/20 - 14/08/20 - 04/10/20 - 17/11/20

This isn’t just a hashtag. This isn’t a trend. This sure isn’t news. So much more needs to be done.
There’s a huge difference between being non-racist and being (actively) anti-racist. Let’s listen, educate ourselves and act.

Below are some resources that I found really helpful. Please don’t hesitate to contact me to suggest other.

Books:

• Why I’m No Longer Talking To White People About Race, Reni Eddo-Lodge

• The Good Immigrant, edited by Nikesh Shukla

• White Fragility, Robin DiAngelo

Children’s books:

• People, Peter Spier

• All are welcome, Alexandra Penfold

• M is for Melanin: a celebration of the black child, Tiffany Rose

• Don’t touch my hair!, Sharee Miller

• Comme un million de papillons noirs, Laura Nsafou & Barbara Brun (French)

• Mixed, Arree Chung

Podcasts:

• Kiffe ta race (French)

• Le Tchip (French)

• Extimité (French)

Databases:

• UK Black Creatives Database

• Black Arts/Creative/Community Organisations

• UK Charities supporting POC

• Cartoonists of Color Database

I also found this collection of anti-racism resources for white people extremely helpful, especially on the parenting side.

Considering the history of the cartoon industry with racial bias and oppression, I have been doing some researches and here are some articles, tutorials and social media posts that I found helpful in my learning process on how to support racial equality with my practice (will keep adding as I keep learning):

• Representation Matters! How To Respectfully Write And Draw POC And LGBTQIA Characters At NYCC, Bleeding Cool

• This article on The Redline Station, where I also discovered the brilliant Kat Tsai (below)

• Drawing East Asian faces, Kat Tsai

• Ideas to consider when creating BIPOC characters, by Charis Jackson Barrios (Charis JB) and a lot more important information on her Instagram profile!

• This article by Mel-Lion about drawing Black people

• Diversity drawing by Ink Factory

• Eva-Lotta Lamm has a great article on visualising inclusiveness and diversity gathering interesting resources, especially for scribing and sketchnoting

SUSTAINING AND DEVELOPING MY LIVE ILLUSTRATION PRACTICE

I am very grateful to Arts Council England for offering me one of their emergency grants during the health crisis. During the next few weeks I will take the time to think and research how to sustain and develop my live illustration practice. This will involve switching from analogue to digital by learning softwares such as Procreate and Tagtool. This research will lead to a series of live illustration events on my YouTube channel.

Stay tuned!

REMOTE GRAPHIC RECORDING FOR SWTCN WORKSHOPS

I had the privilege to be commissioned to perform remote graphic recording for South West Creative Technology Network automation workshops. Here are some extracts of the first session, looking at audiences and how their behaviours can shift because of the COVID-19 crisis.

Remote live illustration are a great alternative to the virtual meeting room during lockdown time. It helps the workshop attendees to focus and have a vivid memory of their collective event.

MATERNAL MENTAL HEALTH AWARENESS WEEK

Following our collaborations in 2019 the Bristol-based charity Bluebell Care commissioned me to produce a series of cartoons for this year’s Maternal Mental Health Awareness Week in partnership with the Perinatal MH Partnership. This series focused on the virtual support the organisation still provides to mothers and young families during the global health crisis.