Books as play objects

Rose Feather is an illustrator, picture book maker and arts facilitator. A few years ago Rose and me worked together in the Learning Team of a museum in Norwich (the Sainsbury Centre for Visual Art). Rose left that job and now works freelance. Last month we had a video call where she told me about her approach to collaboration, about deep listening, and about how drawing and words compete for her attention.

Lawrence: What are you working on at the moment?

Rose: I’ve got a project coming up in Stowmarket this year, making a book with some primary school children, all about the theme of tomorrow. I’m thinking possibly utopia/dystopia. This’ll be my fourth participatory picture book. As I’ve gone on they seem to be more meaningfully collaborative. And my voice gets quieter every time, which I quite like. 

L: How do you begin a collaborative project?

R: Usually I meet the children and the adults together. We never really sit down and say how are we going to make the book? It’s more that we play and then stories come out. And then when I meet them the second time, I’ve looked at the play and looked at what happened and I offer it back to them as a narrative. It’s like we’ve already made a book. 

L: Are they often people who don’t spend time with books?

R: Yeah. So the first book project I did was in Cambridge. And the whole point was to work with families who had low literacy. They were all from North Cambridge and they were referred by a charity for lots of different reasons, and they’re a community. I was very much an outsider.

The first meeting felt quite formal. There was a big circle of people and me in the middle with a big book. But I didn’t read any of the words, I just opened the book and waited. When the silence got too much for some of the children they started talking and pointing. Then we made up some different words for the book and some animal noises and we had a laugh and a song.

Some of the adults said to me at the end I didn’t know you were allowed to do that. I didn’t know you didn’t have to read the words. 

In my workshops I see books more as play objects. Or as starters for conversations and silliness. And I like being a bit rough with books as well, taking the shine off, taking them off the pedestal. The same with the author and the illustrator, not taking them too seriously. 

L: There can be great reverence for authors: ‘Now we’re very very lucky to have a special visitor today … ’

R: [laughs] Making a book has got to be achievable. You’ve got to identify as someone who can do it. I don’t want it [making a book] ever to feel too revered.

L: So in your workshops the children are playing and speaking. Do their words appear in the book at the end? 

R: I did a project at Norwich Castle. In the 2 meetings we improvised a narrative that I had suggested of a medieval Queen coming to Norwich. I gave each family a character – you're the carpenters, you're the woodworkers – and they came in role. They had things to interact with: songs and dances. And how they responded and what they said was word-for-word in the final book.

L: How did you record what they were saying during the play? 

R: Someone who worked at the castle asked me how can I be helpful? what can I do? I asked her to write down everything she heard, and everything she saw people doing: even if you don't think it means much, write it down. Then after they all left I sat down and did memory drawings. So that's how we gathered [the information from the session]. There were no photos and no audio recordings. 

L: How is people’s understanding changed by putting events into a sequence, into a narrative?

R: It can be quite validating. I did a project in Rotherham. The brief was to make links with large parts of the community who just weren’t coming to the museum. The museum never asked for a picture book, they asked for a learning resource. 

When I went to the school [which was involved in the project], they brought in stacks of stories, and they made loads more stories in the session as well. I was worried. I thought how am I going to get all these stories in the book without it becoming just a collection of stories? So I had to shape it. I used a frame narrative. Characters in the story tell the story of the museum. And then they look at an object in the museum – like a football trophy, or a neolithic object – and they tell its story. Which means I can shoe horn in a time-travel story about a caveman that someone came up with, or a story about football.

We also got lots of drawings too, of the objects in the museum, and drawings from people’s imagination, and patterns, and scribbly things with lots of energy. I really wanted to include them. So sometimes a character [in the book] has got a t-shirt and on that t-shirt is something drawn by a child. Or there’s a tablecloth and the design is from a child’s drawing. Or the child’s drawing makes up the sky. I was squeezing in all of the text and images any way I could. 

L: Did people notice that their images and words and had shifted form and appeared in the final book?

R: I never knew! I made the book and printed it and sent it. But I haven’t been back. 

L: It sounds like your workshops gather in contributions and then shape and re-present them. Is this where you use deep listening? 

R: Deep listening is used in different ways, like in policy making and in a spiritual sense. I use the term to mean listening in an active way, mindfully, focusing on it, not just listening to the words that people tell you, or the information, but listening to their gesture, to their pauses, how they’re taking up space in the room. 

L: So these other things which they're doing – the way they're taking up space, the way they're pausing – these modify the meaning of the words they say? 

R: Yeah. Sometimes when I do this sort of listening, I’m also drawing. It bleeds into my observational drawing practice so words are coming out as well.

L: When you're drawing can your pencil start writing too?

R: Oh definitely. I'm always writing and drawing at the same time. Sometimes I find that a bit frustrating cos what I want is a beautiful page in my sketchbook full of drawings and what I’ve got is a list. It’s not so visually appealing but that seems to be how my mind works. 

When I’m listening to someone it’s normally because I’m going to recount what they’re telling me. So I want to take in as much as possible. I want to remember their words but I also want a face to go with a phrase. So when I come back to that phrase I have an image as well. It’s creating a bank of information [of words and images] so you can get back into that headspace. 

L: Thanks so much for telling me about your work Rose.