About
We work collaboratively with diverse schools and communities to enable children, empower teachers, and engage families from all walks of life to read more widely, write more creatively, and develop visual storytelling skills.
We take an artist-led approach to much of what we do, commissioning published writers and illustrators to create and collaborate with children, families and teachers, supporting participants in developing the tools to tell and share their own stories.
We are London-based but we are not geographically fixed, allowing us to work in challenged, sometimes isolated UK communities where meaningful engagement with literature can make a tangible difference.
VISIT website
International Priorities
We are currently developing an international educational and artistic exchange of illustrators and comic artists between Britain, Lithuania, Latvia and Estonia. Driven by the spirit of friendship, the process, its outcomes and legacies aim to transgress European linguistic and cultural barriers in a post-BREXIT Britain. The programme - running March 2017 to March 2018 - will connect 15 published children’s authors, 150 talented young artists (16+) in colleges and universities, and publishers across the four countries to produce outstanding, original illustrated and comic stories. These stories - connected by a unifying theme of ‘friendship’ - will be published in a variety of beautifully designed formats by the publisher partners, and launched at London Book Fair 2018 - where the ‘market focus’ is the Baltic States. A series of opportunities for the lead authors to share practice, promote their work, and participate in literary and public events are threaded through the programme. The young artists will continue to be supported post-LBF, especially around developing and promoting their work to European publishing, including through a digital platform which we hope will become a promotional vehicle for linguistically, ethnically diverse emerging illustrators and comic artists to showcase work online. We aim to evolve both a model and a network to enable continued collaboration between children’s literature organisations, festivals and publishers across Europe.
Key Strengths
Our greatest asset is the community of high quality published writers and illustrators in the UK we support and invest in; and we have long-standing relationships with over 20 major and independent children's publishers. We have strong, sustained relationships with primary, secondary and SEN (special educational needs) schools across England and Wales, and can access a broad diversity of families and communities through those schools. As a small, cross-sector organisation we have the freedom to explore, experiment and innovate around how literature is presented to and accessed by children and families. While the book is at the heart of everything we do, we often take an inter-disciplinary, cross-artform approach to live literature in particular. Everything thing we achieve is through partnership-working, and we have collaborative and knowledge-sharing relationships with many national and regional arts and education partners.
Seeking Partnerships With
We are particularly interested in dialogue with international children's literature sector organisations who deliver literature in schools, communities, public spaces - or mainstream festivals interested in engaging the unengaged - and who might share our 'activist passion' for reaching and inspiring future readers.
Purpose of Partnerships
We are interested in forging connectivity between UK multi-cultural communities and the wider world through literature - including in other languages - and especially across divides, boundaries, borders. Seeking and nurturing emerging literary talent, especially among under-represented communities, is increasingly important to us. We are open to any contemporary, provocative, imaginative, enchanting ideas that might come from authors and artists, ideally via other children's literature organisations, festivals, publishers, with a view to co-evolving something special together.
Contact Us
Executive Director - Dylan Calder
dylan@pop-up.org.uk
Company Manager - Franziska Liebig
franziska@pop-up.org.uk
