I make things in schools, you can too - EMF 2026

[applause] Thank you. Thanks for coming. Um, so yes, you'll notice I have no slides. So, as explained, I'm the arts team's lead here, which means I am not allowed to talk. Um uh there's a reason why arts team please are not or any team leader is not allowed to talk is because the thinking is you have too much to do to prepare a talk. Guess what I have not prepared. So I'm going to wing this talk today which is why I have no slides. But it's okay cuz I've done loads of these before. So we'll make it work as long as you remind me when I'm running out of time. Um I'm going to take this off now because I'm off duty. Yay. Both of them off. Um, I'm up against Luke Mom at the moment. I know that because I just took him down there. Um, so yes, I'm an artist. I've been an artist for Yeah. 17 years. That makes sense. Yeah. We're Yeah. Um, uh, anyone come to my talk? Uh, the last two years ago I give a talk on this. No. Fine. Good. Um, uh, I became an artist late. Uh, I have not always been an artist. Uh, I used to be, believe it or not, I would worked for the dark side. I was an investment banker. Yeah. I worked in technology for investment banking. And I became an artist um because I fell in with a bad crowd. I fell in with a bunch of artists. And I decided that art sounded more fun than being an investment banker. So I became an artist. Um and right from the beginning, a lot of the art I do is working in schools. So I do like community projects. Um uh I've done a lot of projects working in um uh in UK schools doing um basically sort of attainment stuff where the school has like a pro an idea. They're like um we've got a maths class that's failing and we need help. We they need help. Uh and we come in and we try and apply art to that and see what happens. So I've done lots of projects like that. Um and so I've now I've been doing going into schools and doing art projects in primary schools, secondary schools, nursery schools. I've done it in college. Uh I also teach at university. So I do a lot of this sort of stuff of working with people and a lot of working with making art with with kids. Um and the reason I really wanted to talk is because uh uh over those 17 years I've seen I've seen changes happen in this country particularly um in in how kids understand and work with making things with their hands with art with doing stuff. Um, and what I realized is that it's getting my experience anyway is it feels like it's getting worse in this country. Like basically kids do they come to school less prepared to make things because they're not making things at home and they're not spending enough time in schools making things. Um, and the end result is the kids don't have the the key thing is the confidence. They don't have the confidence to make things anymore. I'm just going to grab some water. And that feels like a real shame and a real problem. Um, but it's the upside of that is it feels like this is a thing that you can change. This is a thing that you can do something about. Um, and the main thing I do is I go into schools and I work with kids and I make things with them. And what you find is that kids are just itching to make things. Like it's it's both [snorts] heartening and appalling that a lot of the kids that I work with say things like this is the best thing we've done all year. And that's great cuz you think oh I'm so oh so lovely. Thank you. But then you also think why why is this the best thing you've done all year? Why haven't you been doing this all year? Like what has gone wrong that kids are not making things all year? Um, and a lot of the primary schools I work in, they'll say things like, "Oh, we don't do arts until just before the summer term. We don't do any art at all." Like the kids don't like this is primary schools I'm pointing out here, not secondary schools. This is primary schools. And the kids there teachers saying, "Oh, the kids don't do any art until like the last term." And that feels like something has gone wrong. But what I wanted to try and talk about is to encourage people to think that this is something that you can change. You don't have to be a teacher. You don't even have to have kids. I have no kids. Um you can go in and you can make a difference. And the key is there is it's all about confidence. And the key there is for you to have the confidence to go and do that. And then by going and doing that, you give the kids confidence. And more possibly more importantly that your job is to give the teachers confidence and the parents confidence that they can work with the kids because a lot of this comes down to the teachers themselves don't have the confidence in what they do like they don't know how to make things. They don't know how to to integrate art or making into their lessons. So um I want to talk a little bit about my experience of doing that in case is anyone interested in doing this like that was the point of the talk. is any great people are interested in doing this. So I wanted to give you I'm no expert but I've been doing it I guess for 17 years so surely I've learned something you'd hope. Um so what I wanted to do is talk about how I do it I guess and then maybe how you might do it. Um so the key thing is when you if you contact a pime like primary schools are the best schools to go in. So this is my main the main thing I would say is if you want to make a difference go into the primary schools because secondary schools don't want to talk to you and the thing is not only do the secondary school teachers not want to talk to you but the students don't want to talk to you like they are so trained by that point they're like how will this help me pass my A level English and if you cannot convince that child instantly how this will help them they're like well I don't have the time for this I should be studying And that feels like a a depressingly sad thing to be the case. But at that point, it's too late in a way. You need to catch them at primary school, which is really the best time to work with kids. I think um in particular, my experience is if you're looking for this, year four is without doubt the best year. Year 4 kids are hilarious. They are so good. They've got they're just old enough to be able to like make interesting complicated things and have interesting complicated ideas, but they're not so old that they think like I'm not doing that. Um, so year four is great. It's a really good year to work with. That's probably an aside. Anyway, um, if you find your local schools, so this is what I do. I find the local schools and I go talk to local schools. And the person to talk to is always the deputy head. Never try and talk to the head teacher because they don't actually like they are way too high up or busy or whatever to actually know what's going on in the ground or to be able to engage with an artist. So you go and you speak to the deputy head and you say hey I'm a local artist and even if you are not a local artist that's what you say. So as I' as I'm you know always want to saying if like we are all artists you are all artists for this purpose of this. If you make things, as far as I'm concerned, you're an artist. So you go in, you say, "I'm a local artist and I would like to do projects with the kids." And the main thing the kids schools be thinking is what will this cost me? So if you need to be paid, then there's only basically two routes for doing this. One is the PTA. Find the PTA and tell them to raise the money to pay for artists to work with the kids. and that the the downside there is that only really works in the posher schools. The poorer the school is likely the less the PTA have. Um so the next thing you do is you try and find out if the council do grants for this sort of stuff and you try and you approach them. I've done a lot of projects where the council paid for it. Um or if you feel really passionate about it, you just do it anyway. I've also done ones where I've just done it anyway because hey, it felt like an important thing to do. Um, but those are kind of your roots. Um, and if you're working with a council, you might want to find partner with some other organization. So, here's an interesting one. I do a lot of work with the local business association. So, I work with like all the shops around where I live. They have this local business association. And of course, their concern is getting people into the shops to buy stuff. But like connected to that is they have they feel like with there's a community purpose in supporting local community to come into their shops and buy stuff. Um, so the business association, I work with them and they go to the council and they say, "We would like money from you to regenerate the high street and then they give it to me and I go into a school and I do art with kids and I take the art back and I put it into the high street and look, I'm regenerating the high street. It's a magic route to get money into the schools to make art." Um, so there's there's little tricks you need to find to figure if you need to be paid and I'm a full-time artist, so I need to be paid like, you know, like being paid for art means being able to eat baked beans. So, um, so you need to find sources of money. You need to be clever about finding sources of money because the school won't have it. Like if the school has money, they are too posh to need you is what it boils down to. Um, I think it's important to find the schools where you know that that are failing that are or not failing. That's a harsh thing to say about the schools that are struggling. Maybe that's the word to use. Um, you need to be confident around kids. How much time I got left? Sorry. I'm not 10 minutes. Is that right? No, no, no, no. Hang on. I'm ahead of myself. That can't be 10 minutes. When's this talk finished? Anyone? >> 10 past. Okay. I've got 20 minutes. Fine. I've got loads of time. Um, so I've got 10 like bags of time. We can talk forever. Um, uh, who's hands up if you've already done work with kids? Particularly loads of you. Then why are you here? Why are you here? Like you could have already done this on your own surely. All right. Well, I'm going to talk about my experience of working with kids anyway. Um, which is that kids want to be grown up. So like the the key way to get kids is you're doing a grown-up thing. Like the kids want to be grown up. If they smell that your activity is like it's a kitty thing, then they then then they're bouncing off the wall. Like teachers always say, "Oh, the clouds the class are really rowdy today. I'm really sorry. They've been bouncing off the walls." And almost always that's because the kids are bored. And if you present them with a boring task that they think is just for kids, then they'll bounce off the walls cuz they don't, you know, it's like, "Why should I take this seriously if you're not you're not taking this seriously?" And that's what kids are all about is if you're taking it seriously, then they do. So um you have to take it seriously which means it has to be you go and you say I'm here as an artist to make an art and you are going to make an art with me and we are using real art techniques and you will make a real art and that's particularly good if you can show it somewhere then it becomes a real art which is why I always try and take the things the kids have made and put it in some venue and say look you made a real art and then they take it seriously and then then you've got them then they're excited about it then they want to do the best thing they've ever fun like always. They want to do the best thing they've ever done. Um, so you've got to you've got to be grown up about it and talk to kids like they're grown-ups and kids just love that. Kids love being grown up. They are like particularly at that age, primary school age, they just want to they're rushing towards being grown up. So you just help them along there. Um, and importantly in that because the kids look at the adults around them to figure out how seriously should I take this. If the teachers aren't taking it seriously then it starts to fray at the edges and the problem when I often find in going to classes who actually has gone into schools. Okay. Okay. So, a few of you. Yeah. The thing I mean, maybe you like you tell me about this, but the thing I always find going to schools is that the teachers are so busy these days that when you try and when you come along and you say, "I'm going to do art for kids." The teachers like, "Thank God because that means I can do admin and then they disappear into a corner and they're like writing reports and you're like, "No, no, you need to be with me. You and I are going to do this together. You will also sit there and make an art. And if you can get the teachers doing it too, the kids take it a ton more seriously. Um, not necessarily because they're being told off. Like it's not even about crowd management. It's about kids need to see the adults doing it and then they know it's an improper task. Um, so you have to get all the adults on board. You have to get the TAs doing it. You have to get teachers doing it. Everyone has to take it seriously and they all have to do it together. That's my experience. And if you I've done a bunch of like whole school projects where you do like a big thing like you raise a lot of money and you do a big thing across the whole school which is the most exciting thing to do. And if you're doing a whole school project you start with the teachers like you don't like if you got time to do this you do your first workshops with the teachers. You make them do an art and you make it difficult for them so that they make a mess of it. Like this is really important. You make it difficult so that they make a scratchy mess and then you show the scratchy mess to to the kids and say, "This is what the teachers did. Now you're going to do it. This is your turn to do better." And then the kids really want to do better. Um, so that's that's if you're doing a big project, you can start with the teachers. If you're only going in for like one session with a class, that becomes a bit more difficult, I guess. Um, what else I'm going to advise? Find someone to work with. go into a classroom as two people. Like 30 kids is too many for one person. Like who's who's tried to do this before? Like I don't know how teachers do I mean teachers have TAs I guess but even then it is too much trying to deal with 30 like you know year fours on your own. You need to go in with someone. So I always go in with I've had an art partner that I work with for years and we try and go in together and we do the workshop together. And it also means you can have a bit of a game. You can riff off each other. You can play, you know, you can muck about between the pair of you and the kids like that if you're mcking them out about a little bit too. You know, like when I say take it seriously, I don't mean too seriously. Like you want to have a bit of a play with this thing, don't you? Um, so where have I got to your advice then? So deputy head, find money through whatever means you can. Um, go in, make the teachers do it, too. The teachers have to do it too. You cannot and you have to be really stern with teachers right at the beginning. and you have to say no, no, you you cannot be in the back. You have to be here with me working with the kids and you've got to be like lay the ground rules out. Um the kids um so then let's say we're actually doing some making activity. The thing I found as I've got older, done this more is that I'm finding kids are struggling more and more with like particular if you go into a class if you go to a school that's not like a standard middle class school. If you go to the school that's maybe having a bit of a harder time and the kids there are more varied mixed background um and a lot of them come from homes where and I'm not blaming parents here I want to make this clear um often they're like from a single parent household like that parent has to work or they're coming from a household where both parents are working and no one has the time to be making stuff at home and they don't have the confidence to make stuff at home with their kids. So stuff is not being made at home. So, it means the kids come to school and they basically not really learned to use their hands. Like simple things like cutting out, like I work with tons of kids who I find cannot use scissors, which is kind of awful. Like the fact you can't just like cut cut around something. Um, so you'll find in a class there'll be some kids that you're working, you're doing a lot of close work with trying to get them the confidence to proceed. And it's all about confidence. I'm going to keep coming back to that word. It's all about confidence. So the kids have got you've got to give everyone the confidence to do it. The teachers need to have the confidence, the kids need to have the confidence and that means you have to have the confidence. So you got to go in and own the room and do the thing. Um so the kids I find struggle with like manual tasks like drawing like some of I find kids like can't like hold like holding pencils and doing things like stuff that should be super easy to do as a kid at that age like 8 n years old you should be able to do this sort of stuff. It's kind of awful that kids can, but I work with a lot of kids who just cannot like do simple drawing and writing. Um, like all of it is a struggle to them, which means they become incredibly self-conscious of that. Kids know, kids always know when they're the one that's behind in the class. Like, they know it. And that's those are the kids that are that are probably like like mcking about the most because they're finding it too hard and they just find this is another outlet. I will just muck around instead. So you have to work you have to find them first in the class, which is why you need two people. You just cannot do it on your own. You can't give the kids the attention they need to make this work if you're one person. But if you're two, you can sort of spot that. And if you've worked together for a while, you go, "Yeah, that kid, I'm going to sit and work with them for a bit." And you deal with the rest. and you sit and you give them the experience or the kind of the confidence they need to do the tasks. And the key to that is being enthusiastic. Like I am an enthusiastic person. You need to be an enthusiastic person. Like everything the kids do, there is some like like no matter how rubbish the kid thinks it is or how rubbish anyone thinks it is, there is something exciting in there. And I don't say that. Um I was talking to actually one of our installation artists. Um uh no no workshop. We had a workshop on earlier. There was an adult in here and they were making something. And I was like, "That's amazing." And they said, "You're such a good liar." And I went, "And the truth is I don't I never lie when I say these things." I There's always something amazing to find in something a kid is making or an adult's making. There's always something in there like a certain movement, a mark, a dot, a color they've chosen. There is something to find which is amazing. And you need to find that thing and be amazed by it and be genuinely excited by it so the kid gets that excitement. Like they always have to be excited by what they're doing. Like that's the only way you're going to build their confidence. Like you can't build confidence by going, "Well, you tried. Yeah, you know, it's okay. You know, we'll just leave little Timmy over there with that and then we'll I'll work with the the one who's doing the really good work." Like you can't you've got to infuse the kids that are struggling. Um and then at the sort of the other end, you've got these high attainment kids who are kind of sucking up all the attention because they're really good at something. Um, and often like like you're not trying to do the opposite. You're not trying to tear them down. That'd be a weird thing to do. Like to a little kid. Like why would I do that? But um you have to try and like pushing them into a different direction cuz like kids know, oh, I'm good at drawing. And you're like, well, I'm going to make you do something else then because I don't want you to be good at this task. I want you to I want you to find it difficult because that's how you're going to learn. So, I did a project recently where I went in and all the like I did this decoration project where the kids were making I'm going to stop this and think about this for a minute. They were making lanterns to go on a tree. Um, and uh I thought, well, they could just draw for an hour, but that would be really boring. I want to give them something more of a challenge. So, I made them do it all through um cutting and tearing out. And I just gave them loads of color paper and said, "You have to tear out." So, you're going to draw a picture. So, they immediately draw a picture. And they're like, "Yes, it's going to be the best picture ever." And I said, "Now you're going to cover that up." And like, "But it's my nice picture." I'm like, "I don't care." Like, "But can't I just use the can I just draw?" Nope. Nope. No one is drawing. Like, you've done the outline. You're going to tear up little pieces of paper and you're going to stick them on and you're going to cover it. Um, and the nice thing is you pick a task that like all the kids are going to struggle with because they're not familiar with it. Like it's great to go and do a task that kids are unfamiliar with rather than they they've done before. and force them to try and like find something else inside themselves. Um, and then the kids that are like really good at it suddenly find, oh, actually I don't know how to do this. Like this is a new unknown thing. Um, another one we did was working with um, dip pens. Dip pens are great. They're so exciting cuz the such a scratchy mess. Like dip pens are brilliant and like like it's hard to do anything with a dip pen. It's like really difficult. So you'd like give all these like tiny kids like bits of paper and say, "Right, you're going to write a letter to to Santa or whatever it is." Now, you know, pick some random task that fits with the curriculum. Find that's the other tip. Find a task that fits the curriculum. Ask teacher what are the kids learning? What is the project they're working on? Um I think this one was they were reading a book that was about um someone who traveled. And I said, "Okay, so you're all going to write a letter pretending to be writing to that person who's traveling or the other way around. I can't remember. They all had to write a letter and it's like, "No, but you don't get a normal pencil. You get a dip pen and you're going to write a scratchy mess letter." Um, and it was great because the kids hated it. Like, everyone hated it. It was brilliant. Like, there's nothing better than than torturing children. Like, uh, it really is. Um, so yes, so I picked a you pick tasks which are going to be difficult and that people that that this the the kids that are struggling like are just like they're going to be perplexed by is any task you would have given them. The kids that are really good are now like like kind of pissed off and that's kind of good. Like I kind of like the like the really strong one you like pissing them off a little bit is quite good. And he's like but can I do the thing I'm really good at? No. No you cannot. You're going to do the thing I sent you to do. Um, and you're going to learn a new thing. Um, what have I got? I've got 10 minutes left. What else can I talk about? Um, yeah, the output. So, you want the kids, it's great to pick a kind of some project where the kids all making like they all want to make their own thing. Like kids obviously want to make their own thing and they want to be super protective of it. I am making my thing and no one else is going to touch it. Um, but if you can get them find ways of combining these things into something bigger and more interesting. Um, I did one not too long ago where I got all the kids to make paper mushrooms and they all got to like we all followed the same technique and then they had to decorate their paper mushrooms and then we turned the paper mushrooms into one display of all of the mushrooms and we like they carefully stuck them all down and we put lights inside them and lit it all up and then we put all the blinds on the classroom and turned them off and then we took pictures of it and did videos of the all the paper mushrooms they'd made. So getting them to think as individuals and as a collective is really good. Getting them to think, okay, we're making a thing together that will be displayed. Um that I find that a really good thing that kids really get on with. And then of course if that thing is going to be shown somewhere, if you can say, right, we're going to take this thing, we're going to put it in a local shop like I've done recently. Um or we're going to put it in um uh on display in the school. That works as well. You can say, okay, well this thing I need the I want it to be on display in the hall. Um and that's you know and you just tell you just tell the school this is what you're going to do like this is the other okay this is my my top piece of advice when you go into a school uh as an artist and this is why you have to call yourself an artist when you go into a school as an artist you are the other um has anyone heard that um famous quote that King Leopold horrendous man wrote to Queen Victoria uh when he when Queen Victoria ascended the throne years and years ago he wrote this um letter to her saying Um, beware artists, which is just I love that. Beware artists. And you said something I'm paraphrasing slightly. Um, they mix at all levels of society and therefore are the most dangerous. And I just like I felt like I want to live by that. Like that's my mission now is to be dangerous as an artist. So when you go the point of this, when you go into a school as an artist, you are the other. Like you're you're something else. Like no one knows quite what you are. you're like not a teacher. Uh you're you're not like like you know you you know obviously not a kid. You're not a parent. You're like you're not really like like you don't have a job. You're not like sweeping up. You're not in the kitchen. You're this strange other thing. Um and the other allows you to gives you permission as long as you've got the confidence like I said confidence. As long as you've got the confidence being other gives you permission to demand things. You can go in and say we're going to do this. I will need this wall. Um, and then like people like, uh, okay, well, the artist asked for it, so I guess we should do that. Um, and it's amazing like how far you can get just doing that. Um, uh, or just the other thing you do is as an artist, you have the permission to just ignore the rules. You can just go, "Wow, but this is the art. We're going to do the thing. I don't care what you say." Um, I did this great project. Uh, well, I say when I say I, I mean me and Andy, my art partner, my art wife. Um most of these projects I've done was him. Five minutes left. Good. Um uh we did this great project in primary school. It was a longterm project. We had lots of time to play with the kids. Uh it was the scratchy letter one in fact. And we said right I'm going to take all the letters at the end. Everyone's going to fold them up. They're going to address them to the character in the story. I can't remember. And we're going to make an installation out of all the letters. And we thought it'd be really nice making this sort of post box all the letters flying out of it or flying into it. You could interpret it either way. So, we thought we'll hang them all from little threads. Um, and we'll put it in in like one of the hallways coming into the into the school. Uh, and we spoke to teach about it and said, "So, we'd like to put this big installation in here. It's going to hang all from the roof. We're going to fill this whole corridor with the kids letters that will hang in above their heads. It'll be great." And teacher's like, "Oh, no. We're not allowed to put anything into the corridors." Like, the head doesn't allow it. And we're like, I'm like, "Okay, good to know." And then as soon as all the teachers have left at the end of the day, we hung the installation. I'm like, I don't care. Like I'm not getting in trouble. And who's going to fire me? Like we're putting the thing up once it's there, you know? Who's going to be who's going to be the spoils boy who takes a damn? Yeah. Uhhuh. So when the kids come in the morning like they were amazed and the teacher and you know if the head teacher was upset, I don't care. Uh because we made an art that the kids were excited about. And that's the most important thing for me is what the kids are excited about, not what the not the teachers or the headteer particularly cares about. Uh yeah. So that's where am I running into advice? I'm running out of time. So um let's summarize. So be an artist. I mean everyone should be an artist anyway. Be an artist. If you need to find money and be inventive about finding money, uh if you're going to a school, talk to the deputy head. Um often there'll be a particular deputy head who's in charge of like outside creative projects sort of thing. You need to find that person. Um oh, I forgot one. Be nice to the people on the on the reception. In fact, be nice to all the staff obviously, but particularly the people in the reception because they're the gatekeepers. They control everything in school. Always like when you go in, always be super friendly to the reception staff. Um uh if you can get enough money, do a whole school project. They're absolutely the best. There's just And if you're going to do a whole school project, not just the teachers, you want to do the cleaning staff, you want to do the the people that cook all the food, whatever. You want anyone who's there, you say, "What are you doing?" Right, you're going to make an art. It doesn't matter. Everyone should do it and it all goes up and everyone enjoys it then. And the kids get more excited the more adults that do it. Um so uh staff um go in in pairs um uh find the find the kids that are struggling and sit and work with them. There is they are doing something exciting. You just need to find it. Like everyone can do something exciting. Um like break rules. Yeah, absolutely. Break rules in schools. Like this this is often you go into a school and you know what's wrong with the school immediately and it's always the head teacher. Like you go in and you feel something feels wrong in this school. Like why why is everyone so scared and it will be the head teacher. Um in this particular the case the school that we went in with the letters that's exactly what I found. I was like there's something wrong with this school we were all thinking. And then we met the head teacher near the end of project and we went, "Oh, that's what's wrong here." Um, uh, I'm running out of time where I get to, um, find something difficult. Find something complicated the kids can will find that the good kids will find a challenge and that the difficult kids can do any like it's just as difficult. It's fine. Um, you throw some throw some advice at me. What's what things have you like if you worked in school? Surely you've got advice. No. Oh, come on. You're lacking confidence. >> Wild, but uh we we're doing an art science project and we find it's very much easier to get money from the science. >> Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. There's lots This is what I mean about be inventive. Like there's lots of ways of finding the money. >> Find the money and then just make the art anyway. But find the money from wherever you can find the money and say we're going to turn this into art now. Um, >> one minute left. Do I have questions after? I forgotten how this works. >> Uh, yeah. >> Yeah. Okay. Yeah. Um, >> we have 10 minutes. >> Oh, yeah. Yeah. We got 10 minutes on the YouTube. Yeah. Yeah. >> Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. We can do this. Um, should we just go to straight to questions then? Come on, ask me a question. >> Yeah. >> Can you tell us more about that? >> Uh, I mean that scratchy letter one I thought was great because it it felt like it exemplified everything we were trying to do. It was a whole school project and we got everyone to write like we we made all the teachers write letters first. So it was the same thing and they all had to do with scratchy dip pens and they all hated it. Um we made a big installation in the school that that engaged with that entire school because everyone had to walk past it coming in every day. Um so finding a way to like get everyone infused and everyone engaged and you just have to be enthusiastic for that to happen. If you're enthusiastic and you're engaging then you will infuse people and they will be engaged. Seems obvious, doesn't it? You just kind of have to You don't realize it until you're doing it that that's what you're doing. That's what it's all about. >> Yeah. Anyone else got anything? >> Yeah. >> How did you walk away from >> Why? Yeah. How? Well, I gave a whole talk on this about how I walked away from investment banking. Um I It's like in reality, I got I got, you know, basically made redundant. So, it was easy to walk away from investment. What happened? I didn't go back. That's what really I it wasn't like I walked away. It's just I I had some time off. I started doing art and I thought I am never going back. That's really what happened. >> Yeah. Anyone else? >> Yeah. >> Yeah. So the a lot of the bigger projects I do involve whole communities. So I do stuff that's um uh like lantern parade stuff. You'll seen Did anyone tell the pray the lantern workshops we were doing here? No. Yes. Yeah. We did lantern workshops here, which I love doing lantern making. I didn't run the lantern workshops cuz I think that's that's a step too far. I cannot be running the thing and doing the workshops. Um, but I do a lot of I outside of that I do a lot of lantern making projects working with kids and then you can do and you work in multiple schools and you do a whole community thing and you you still start in the schools if you're trying to do a community project is my advice because you find the community through the schools because you start with the kids and then you go out to their parents and then you go out from there. So the schools are the way into a community because otherwise it's hard to know how to get in. >> Yeah, I have a community. >> Yeah, if you've already got a community then great. I have a community. So I have the kids. >> Yeah. >> Yeah. I mean, yeah. Obviously, when you're doing a when you're doing a broad age range, it's you have to think more creatively about what is the task that everyone can do. But, you know, you like I say, you just find you find like lantern making is nice because most people have never done it before. And you can teach little kids to do it and you can teach adults to do it. And everyone's everyone's finding it difficult like this. Yeah. You you you find the task that everyone finds difficult and then everyone's leveled like the kids are doing the project like the most beautiful lantern making project I did we ran loads of workshops in schools. Then we ran community workshops which were open and anyone could come to and the kids brought their parents and the kids taught their parents and it was the most beautiful thing to see because the kids were like they were the grown-up now and they were demonstrating how to do it. like no, you have to do like this and you have to do that and you have to snap it here and no, you're doing it wrong. You have to cover it like and it's just magical to see that happen where the kids suddenly get the confidence to tell other people how to do something. This is why I always want to start with the kids first. You you find everyone else through the kids basically. Um yeah, one last one I think. >> How do you give the quiet kids a loud voice? Um, it's about find it's I find it's about finding the thing they've made that's amazing that you can then talk to the other kids about and say look at this. So you see the way they've done that that's extraordinary. And the thing is like like I've worked with lots of kids particularly you find um the autistic kids in the class that are finding things quite difficult. They will often do something they just something about I mean we're all a bit autistic aren't we? Basically, there's often something just I am there's something a bit mad in your head where you've suddenly you do something magical like and it's unusual and unexpected and you can find that and you can say and you can show it to the other kids and say this this is extraordinary and this is why it's extraordinary and if you're the authority, you're the artist. If you tell the other kids this is amazing, it is because you've made it amazing. >> Yeah. And that's that's always my job is like when I'm working in schools, I'm trying to find something in the kids' work that I can show to the other kids and say, "This is amazing. This child is amazing and they do amazing things." Yeah. Uh thank you. [applause]