When we arrived at The Pop-Up Festival of Stories on Sunday morning, we were told that by the end of the day we would have fallen in love with Pop-Up. And we DID.
Our Pop-Up Picture Pavilion, curated by the frankly amazing James Mayhew, had been transformed into a gallery of wonders by the term of young designers and artists.
In my corner, the Rousseau-inspired jungle was ready and waiting.
All I needed now were my artists!
At noon, the doors opened.
The first tiny piece of jungle foliage was stuck on.
More and more children arrived and stayed for ages, making beautiful, WONDERFUL pieces of artwork, and so the jungle grew.
The peaceful atmosphere of happy, quiet, absorbed creativity made my heart puff up with pleasure.
Unexpectedly one of the biggest successes was simply a huge piece of paper stuck down on the ground, with an invitation to sit a while and draw anything at all.
That’s a bunny kingdom Flo has drawn, by the way. How great is that!
So while cut paper artist Vanessa Stone made magical creations on her table, and James worked with the children on wonderful paintings recreating the great masters, and telling stories…
how were my team getting on?
Brilliantly! How serious they are when proudly showing their work.
Lovely people called by for a chat, too.
I met my small friend H from MissHollyBlog…
my grown-up friend @pollylwh from book blog The Little Wooden Horse brought me cheer and a go on her famous toucan hat…
and just when energy levels were flagging, my twitter friend bookseller @lauramainellen arrived with HOMEMADE JAMMY DODGERS.
It was such a very special day. I just want to congratulate Pop-Up director Dylan Calder, the army of committed helpers who prepared it all so perfectly, and also the Orchard team who looked after us.
And to leave you with my best picture of the day – I don’t know why I love it so much, I just do.
looking at it all and make small satisfied sighs at all that NICENESS. Your own sighs must and should be considerably bigger.
a triumph.
It is still very sigh-y.
Also true that some of the best pictures are in the mind’s eye: I love the description in your post of a baby working in pastels on Van Gogh’s Starry Night – http://thelittlewoodenhorse.blogspot.co.uk/2012/07/pop-up-festival-and-cake.html; very magical.
Magic and creativity and jammy dogders and children in, on and surrounded by art and… yes, niceness. Perfect indeed! Big contented sighs here as well… A special day full of special people and there IS no-one nicer to have shared it with X
One of our best, for sure! All bodes very well indeed for future secret plans, don’t you think, James?
OH yes I Certainly do… What fun we have up our voluminous sleeves!
Hellooo!
It was so lovely to meet you! Holly still talks about it – and everything that day was brilliant – such a fantastic idea putting the paper on the floor too. Our little budding artist had a fabulous time.
Are there any more planned? We’ll definitely be there!
Thank you so much, Jo – it was brilliant to meet you all at last too! So happy that Holly enjoyed her day.
Yes – the big piece of paper worked a treat, didn’t it? I love how close the small people needed to get their noses to their drawings…