University News Last updated 11 May 2017
A selection of our current BA (Hons) Illustration students are in the middle of a hugely exciting project that has the potential to make a huge impact on their future careers.
“Pop Up Projects // International Illustrators” is an international exchange of outstanding emerging illustrators and comic artists from across the UK, Estonia, Latvia and Lithuania.
As part of this particular project, 18 published children's illustrators and comic artists across the four countries mentioned above, have been commissioned to work with multilingual groups of gifted students from across 16 universities and colleges.
Guided by their artist-mentors, the students will produce their own illustrated stories in a distinct ‘leporello’ (concertina) format - then their publisher partners, (Nobrow here in the UK), will produce small print-runs of each story!
The resulting library - 33,000 copies of 160 original titles- will be presented alongside an exhibition of some of the best artwork during London Book Fair 2018.
Deputy Programme Leader in Illustration, Ian Dodds, is hugely proud of the project:
Our Illustration students have also recently spent a week working with award-winning Latvian children’s book illustrator and animator, Reinis Petersons. Reinis will return on 27th -30th June to finalise their projects, and is keeping in touch via Skype workshops until then.
Second year student Karoline Holhjem is enjoying the project immensely:
“This project is great as it’s challenging me to do a new type of illustration, and hopefully it will open up for even more projects and good opportunities in the future. It is about storytelling but is also very open, so we are allowed to make it personal and do what we enjoy – which is good! If my work is exhibited at the London Book Fair it would be a great honour! One of my main interests are book illustrations, and I wish to get to know the market and also make myself known through it.
As if this wasn’t enough, the project coordinators told us;
“We are also collaborating with “House of Illustration” to create a major legacy, producing an exciting new digital platform – also to be launched during London Book Fair 2018 - to seek out, curate and showcase diverse emerging talent direct to children’s publishers, drawn from this project and beyond.”
“It is also our hope that through this project we will develop a network to increase collaboration between UK and especially European children’s literature organisations, to promote and exchange outstanding illustration and comics practice and practitioners in the long-term.”
This is a great opportunity for our students to raise their profiles, both nationally and internationally.
We wish them all the best of luck and can’t wait to tell you more about the project as it progresses! Watch this space!
