A Tale of Two Cities (in Derby!)

I was asked to created some drawings for the Derby School Inclusion conference that happened back in June. Unfortunately, whilst all the schools have signed up to the Inclusion Charter, the number of annual exclusions is still rising. 

This story plus some acted out theatre sketches were used to illustrate different behavioural approaches to difficult situations at school. Hats off to all the teachers out there - it's a really hard job!

Thanks to Jo Wilkinson at the Derby County Community Trust's Inclusion Partnership for asking me back! https://inclusionpartnership.co.uk/

Cafcass 25 year celebration

This year Cafcass is 25 - lots has changed in this time, mostly for the better for children and hopefully this will continue, even as the pressure on this service continues to build.

I listened to this event as a recording and had time to think, reflect and draw. 

Not the usual mad scramble of live drawing, and I much prefer it!

Below is the full banner image with excerpts underneath. The contributions by the FJYPB https://www.cafcass.gov.uk/children-and-young-people/family-justice-young-peoples-board are my favourite and very much inform what I draw. My aim is to constantly put children and young people at the heart of these images, because their futures are dictated by the process of the family court.

SEND conference in Leicester

Please click on the image to enlarge.

A couple of weeks ago I was live scribing at this conference in Leicester because they spotted me working on a similar conference up in Derby last year. 

This inclusion conference was for the Discovery Trust https://discoverytrust.org/ and was the first gathering for quite a few years. It was a big cohort of about 600 and the room was just buzzing with enthusiasm and a lot of laughter.

I was really amazed at how much this trust has achieved in only 14 years. They have a large network of SEND schools, with other more mainstream schools also in the process of joining and they pool resources. This means that the kids get to enjoy a really well rounded education and are really given so many chances to exceed everyone's expectations. It's really wonderful :)

Healthy Child and Teen Relationships

I was asked by the charity Let Me Know https://lmkletmeknow.org to draw several healthy and unhealthy relationship scenarios that would be used by their practitioners to help inform discussions about healthy relationships for children and young people, mainly peer to peer. The wish is to empower the children and young people to feel confident in their choices and to make the decisions that are right for them.

This project involved being briefed carefully on the wording of the situations, then working together to define what situation to apply them to, plus being mindful of inclusive representation.

I've mixed them up a bit, can you spot the difference between the healthy and unhealthy ones? Hope so!