my story
Hi, I'm Hannah !!
A number of years ago, I read out one of my books at a school assembly.
Afterwards, children were coming up to me saying that THEY were illustrators and THEY were authors too!! It was so cute but it also got me thinking about a story-making club - somewhere where drawing and writing were taught together as storytelling tools and also just
as an opportunity for kids to let loose all their wonderful ideas.
I had been making storybooks alongside family portraiture for 4 years, having left a 7-year career in Architecture to be more flexible around my 3 children (who were all under 7 at the time).
I loved being a portrait artist as it was such a privilege to do something so special for people but I have always felt stories gave me that extra bit of stimulation that portraiture alone wasn’t giving me. I also found making stories useful to explain tricky concepts to my kids like autonomy and motivation.
A month into running my first school club, it became clear that its power went way deeper than simply learning to make storybooks. So many of the kids were struggling with putting pen to paper without explicit instructions to get them going. When they did eventually get something down, they’d keep it teenie weenie to reduce the margin for error. I had to ban rubbers for a time because as soon as they managed to draw something they’d rub it out immediately! The uncertainty, the self-consciousness and the risk that came with drawing seemed too much to handle for some of these kids. But I knew that uncertainty was what made creativity powerful…and necessary. The more research I undertook and the more people I spoke to about the issue, the more I became convinced we are steamrollering into a crisis due to this deeply-intrenched creative confidence vacuum.
Even those children who are clearly creative find themselves perpetually dysregulated without outlets for this drive. My daughter is a prime example of one of these children. She still comes home from school every day and goes straight for her pen box as a means by which to come down from her expectation-filled, rule-filled and, sometimes, punishment-filled day. If she didn't have art and storytelling as an outlet….I don’t know where we’d be right now.
Everything I have done from this point has been to get to grips with WHY we are in this crisis, WHAT needs to be done about it and HOW on earth to spread the word. Because it is our values as parents, as teachers and as society that need to change if we are ever to be able
to make the necessary changes for our children.
