Day two Abstracts
Panel 2 - moderated by Vincent Larkin.
Principal Lecturer, Illustration, University of Worcester, UK
Dr. Sheena Calvert
University of the Arts, London and the Royal College of Art
From Hand-to-Hand, Pocket- to-Pocket: The Radical Potential of a Single Sheet of Paper
This paper is a meditation on the radical creative potential and political power of a single sheet of paper. A philosophical framework for thinking about the single sheet of paper as space to counter the banality of AI produced work and much screen- based digital production. We will contextualise the role of print as an agent of societal change and the historical role of illustration in seeding ideas and values through street literature, in the form of rebellious, democratic and seditious pamphlets. Resisting the persistent corporate panopticism of social media through the medium of print is to embrace intimacy, physical encounters and unmediated messages shared freely. Analogue ideas and knowledge, worn next to your heart and in your pocket will be at the core of our thinking and making. We will introduce our new collaboration: The Invisible Art School. This is a subscription- based mail art project which takes its inspiration from The Whole Earth Catalogue and Dryad Handicrafts pamphlets. Our publications will similarly give you access to tools and activate your hands, enacting our mantra: ‘Knowledge passed hand-to-hand, pocket-to-pocket’. We will produce low cost printed pamphlets that show you how to make, mend or repurpose something. Print is a form of intellectual currency and as long as we have access to simple tools and a cheap printer, then we can produce as much as we like. By subscribing you will also be able to join a peripatetic community of physical meet ups and workshop sessions to share skills and stories. These tiny but forceful ‘How to…’ pamphlets will facilitate an analogue network that creates constellations of ideas and forms communities of interest.
www.invisibleartschool.wordpress.com/about/
Illustrator and researcher, University of Plymouth, UK
This paper explores the role of illustrated paper artefacts, specifically hand-made badges, as tools for participatory climate and queer activism. Drawing from my practice-based PhD, which investigates illustration as a method as transformative learning for sustainability, I reflect on one of the workshops where LGBT+ participants were invited to create small- scale paper badges, to express personal and political responses to climate injustice. Rooted in a queer ecological perspective, the project considered both the physical and symbolic properties of paper as a platform for voice, identity, and collective action. The use of paper was central to both consider sustainable materials to protest artefacts, but also as a responsive material that embodied both environmental precarity and creative possibility, in its qualities as both a durable and fragile material.This workshop builds on theories of tactile and tacit knowledge, arguing that working with paper through hands-on making practices encourages reflection, dialogue, and a sense of agency that can foster transformation learning for sustainability. The resulting badges, designed to be worn, serve as mobile micro- manifestos of protest, hope, and action, that can circulate within activist, educational and public contexts. Paper situates these practices within contemporary illustration discourse,suggesting that paper- based artefacts can function as sites of both aesthetic and activist production. It argues that by making visible the intersection of queer identities and climate concern, illustrated paper forms like badges become powerful catalysts for sustainable, inclusive, and hopeful cultural transformation.
Panel 3 - moderated by John Kilburn
Senior Lecturer, Illustration, University for the Creative Arts, Farnham, UK
This presentation introduces the concept of the unflattened picturebook—a term I propose for children’s books that use the physical nature of the book- object as an essential narrative device. These books resist the flatness of conventional formats by employing spatial design, material variation, and dynamic interaction to construct narrative meaning. Unlike traditional picturebooks, unflattened picturebooks engage readers through touch, movement, and structure. They explore the narrative potential of paper texture, layering, folds, and page-turn dynamics. The story is not only seen and read—it is physically navigated and revealed through interaction. Drawing on my own practice-based research and examples by artists such as Bruno Munari, Katsumi Komagata, Adrien Parlange, and Lucie Félix, I will demonstrate how the book-object can act as a narrative agent. These works reimagine the book not merely as a container for image and text but as a participatory space—one that invites readers to play, discover, and co-create meaning. This talk is aimed at illustrators, designers, and book artists interested in exploring materially-led approaches to visual storytelling in picturebooks. By foregrounding the book’s form as part of its narrative content, unflattened picturebooks open up expansive creative possibilities that challenge and enrich the traditions of picturebook making.
Coordinator of BA in Visual Studies & Creative Industries, UAE University, Al Ain. PhD Candidate, University of Plymouth, UK
Memory in Motion: From Childhood Keepsakes to Classroom Cut-Outs As an illustrator, my creative practice has long been shaped by a fascination with memory, materiality, and the imaginative potential of everyday objects. Over the years, I’ve collected pop-up books, handmade cut-outs, and small paper artifacts—many of them tattered, used, or gifted items. Though modest, these objects linger in my memory, not only as sentimental keepsakes but as enduring models of play, narrative, and learning. This presentation explores how such humble paper forms have evolved from personal collections into pedagogical tools. During my work in kindergartens and children’s clubs, pop-up and cut-out activities became key methods for storytelling, engagement, and creativity. Later, in higher education courses, I incorporated these same techniques as exercises in mindfulness, encouraging students to slow down, focus, and explore spatial storytelling through hands-on craft. Cutting, folding, and assembling paper becomes more than a leisure activity: it becomes a practice of care, attention, reactivation of memory and mindfulness. This talk will reflect on the journey of these objects from being used and nearly discarded, to being kept, adapted, and re-used in educational and creative settings. Through this lens, pop-ups are not only design elements but vessels of memory and imagination, as they link past and present through tactile storytelling.
United Arab Emirates University (UAEU) student
I have always been fascinated by pop-up books those layered, tactile stories that come to life in your hands. As a child, they expanded my imagination; as an artist, they taught me that even the simplest fold of paper can hold immense emotional and narrative weight. My practice has always been driven by curiosity a need to ask larger questions about human experience, morality, and the unseen consequences of our choices. In this paper and the accompanying art piece, I present a sculptural pop-up narrative that challenges the binary of good and evil. The story follows a man who has saved countless lives, only to be confronted by Death itself not as a villain, but as a cosmic force outraged by the disruption of natural balance. Through layered visuals and three-dimensional storytelling, the work explores how excessive mercy can lead to unintended harm: villains who were spared wreaking further destruction, lives extended into suffering, and a universe unravelling under the weight of unchecked good. This piece is both a philosophical inquiry and a visual experiment. It asks: Can too much good become dangerous? What happens when kindness defies consequence? Using the familiar language of pop-up storytelling, I invite the viewer to engage with a world where moral clarity collapses and every action echoes far beyond its intent.
Panel 4 moderated by Jeannie Sinclair
Signwriter & educator
Co-Authors Ben Whyman Dr. Leah Gouget-Levy
‘Collective Care’ is a conversation exploring how written archival descriptions in paper archives prompt encounters of their own when objects are absent. Through explorative conversations spanning several years, the project evolved into an illustrative paper- based exhibition, ‘Collective Care’ (2024, LCF). For a panel discussion, we propose continuing this conversation, reflecting on the value of the paper artefact and how this has extended ways our voices can intersect with those within the archive. Leah: Initially, my role was as instigator. Through conversations with Amy and Ben, the kernels of my embryonic thoughts about the nature of archives, the relation between word and object and what happens in the spaces between, became something much richer and more complex through shared exchange and development. Amy: I could be considered a translator: exploring ways of layering archival descriptions and fragments of our conversations visually to craft the ‘language of care’. Here, care is taken to acknowledge the dialogue between Ben, Leah and I, and the absences in archival descriptions. Ben: I think of myself as the dramaturg. I helped promote understanding of what was before us and emerging themes we could play with. We reflected where the material led us (tangible and intangible – the paper artefact and the ephemeral absence of language), how we might structure it, and what it was to look and feel like as an expressive entity. The panel discussion will evidence crafting the next phase: questioning where our curiosity of the vocabularies of the paper and the archive will lead.
Panel 5 moderated by Carolyn Shapiro
It is no accident the Guardian recently requested their illustration team to use traditional cut & paste collages to feature alongside commentaries on 2024 election coverage. Hannah Hoch arguably set a trend for an honourable tradition in which art and popular culture – primarily magazine images – collided to capture both the zeitgeist and deeply subversive potential of collage in her commentary of events in the Weimar Republic and lead-up to WWII. Martha Rosler and Linder Sterling have, in the late 20th/early 21st Centuries, used collage to draw attention to issues of colonialism, war, gender- identity and marginalisation, recognising how the haptic becomes part of the whole, how a rough-edged feel adds another dimension of authenticity to images intended to provoke discussion and raise political awareness. Contemporary images using digital technology add another dimension of complexity to what constitutes ‘originality’; as Benjamin noted, the aura of an original artefact retains the intention and literal handprint of the artist. Today we have very arguable zones of uncertainty around what is ‘real’– which is why the Guardian’s stance was significant, given the rise of disinformation and image-fakery. Focusing on Rosler and Linder and their idiosyncratic takes on world events, I suggest we relish and retain manual haptic- ness in the collage-process – using photoshop/technology as an aid but not the ultimate manifestation of practice – to reclaim punk-potential, for exploring how the shock act of collage-insertion reveals underlying dynamics and social truths of our times.
Creative Wellbeing Facilitator, Researcher, MA Communication Design Student, Falmouth University
This talk examines the barriers adults face to play, looking at how nervous system dysregulation and the pressures of burnout culture limit wonder, risk- taking, and connection. In a society where burnout is categorised as a personal failure and recovery is reduced to commodified bubble baths and productivity hacks, play has become a radical, collective, and embodied form of resistance. Drawing on theories such as polyvagal, flow/awe, colour, and neuroaesthetics, we will explore how co-regulated, sensorial, and relational play practices can restore trust, belonging, and resilience. Play is not trivial; it is political, relational, nostalgic, and radical. It allows adults to reclaim risk as a source of awe and wonder, cultivate creative confidence, and move beyond survival toward flourishing. Through paper, we will explore the tactile, messy, and joyful possibilities of cutting, sticking, and crafting as ways to reconnect with our collective presence and flexibly regulated nervous systems. This talk also provides the theoretical foundation for the ‘Paper & Play: The Workshop’, where participants will embody these co-regulating and celebratory practices through paper play. The workshop builds resilience, trust, and collective flourishing in action.
www.instagram.com/journey_to_play