Dinosaur Roar Installation designed and built as Artist in Residence at Seven Stories in Newcastle - July 2014
I have been giving author visits and events and running pop-up book or drawing workshops for children and adults of all ages and abilities for the last 20 years. It's a great privilege and I have had the pleasure to meet and work with children in schools, libraries and at many of the major UK Literary Festivals and Music Festivals, in Europe and the US.
I'm happy to travel anywhere in the UK or abroad.


Authors Aloud UK look after bookings for my events and workshops. Authors Aloud UK offer an excellent service for any school, library or festival events.
"Authors Aloud UK will streamline the whole process of booking your event by handling all the set up arrangements as well as providing you with detailed background information and guidelines on running a successful event."
For further details about Paul Stickland Pop Up Workshops or Author Events, please contact Anne Marley at Authors Aloud UK

I have run all manner of workshops, notably concentrating on encouraging children’s creativity and literacy through the medium of children’s picture and pop up books in schools, libraries and the major literary and music festivals all over the UK and abroad.
 
These range from drawing to pop-up book workshops, through to creating ’Incredibly Tiny Paper Worlds’ and one year at Glastonbury Kidz Field, ‘The Worlds Longest Drawing’, a 90 metre long drawing with a team of artists and the children of the festival.
I was artist in residence at Seven Stories in Newcastle July 2014 and was asked to create a huge Dinosaur Roar! Mouth Installation for their Creation Station. Huge fun, a great success and something I would love to do again! The faces of the children, parents and grandparents were a picture!

Just recently, I've created a BugStore! full of colourful pop up paper bugs created by the children of four local schools and filling an empty shop in Yeovil town centre.
This is such a great idea for a literary or children's festival as it really showcases the outreach work that we all do in the local communities in the build up to and during the festival.
The children have been really proud of all their work and justifiably so. I've been delighted with the result! Click here to see the BugStore!

I do like exploring new themes and ideas for events and visits, so do contact me if you'd like to discuss your ideas.


This is what could happen at your Paul Stickland Author Event or Pop Up Dinosaur Workshop:

• Simple readings or talking about my picture and pop up books.
Reading from all my children's books, discussion of the life of an author/illustrator and the creation of books, the stories, ideas and fun behind the development of the characters, the first rough drawings and texts, through to the design of pop up books. I can provide AV presentations to go along with any of these options.


• Dinosaur or monster drawing workshops.
Children are natural dinosaur experts and are full of ideas about how dinosaurs actually look!
I start these off by reading and discussing my children's dinosaur books, such as Dinosaur Roar and Ten Terrible Dinosaurs. Then I might draw a big dinosaur or monster, to the children's specification, before everyone creates and draws their own marvellous monsters!



• Pop up dinosaur, monster or bug workshops!
These are really popular, incredibly creative and great fun!
I show the children my pop up books, such as Truck Jam and Big Dig, Dinosaurs Galore and Big Bug Little Bug, including my early ideas, roughs and mistakes. I then show the children how to make a simple pop up dinosaur mouth or pop up bug. They then create their own amazing pop up dinosaur mouths or pop up bugs! If we have time I encourage them to take the ideas further, to decorate and embellish their creations. The results are usually incredible, see photos below!




If you would like to see some more of the fabulous pop-up creations created in these pop up workshops, please do look at these photo albums from recent pop up book workshops.
• Sherborne County Primary
• Leweston Preparatory School
• StoryFest 2013
• Fairchildes Primary, Croydon
• Paul Stickland Pop Up Workshops and Author Events
• Oxford Literary Festival 2015
• All recent Pop Up Monster, Dinosaur and Bugs Pop Up Workshops

The children have great fun and I must admit, so do I.

I am happy to work with children of all ages and abilities, primary or secondary.
If you are interested in a pop up workshop for your company, college, management course or art group, please do get in touch.
As a way of freeing up creativity within a group, these guided workshops can be a real surprise. I find that when I work at Music or Literary Festivals, the adults that accompany the children have a wonderfully creative time and are often really surprised by their amazing creations.

With the readings and talks, the numbers are not too important but with the workshops it's best to aim for around thirty/forty children, unless there are plenty of helpers on hand. This way the children can get individual attention.

Timing wise, even with the little ones, 45 minutes goes quickly and with the workshops we really need two hours.

I provide a list of necessary resources, paper, glue etc. and the best suppliers.

I can also organise books for sale and book signing, which is popular if well publicised in advance.
You can buy copies of my books from my Paul Stickland Amazon Book Store.

If you need images for any mail shots or publicity, please do take them off my website here!


Paul Stickland Video from the Big Top at Storyfest 2013
Talking about Dinosaur Roar!


If you would like to arrange an author visit, or pop-up workshop in your school, library or festival, please do contact me here about fees and availability for author visits.


I have assembled an amazing list of resources and inspiration for teachers and students on my Blog PopUpPaper

Testimonials


• Sir Ken Robinson
You are helping! Love the books, bugs & dinosaurs and all you do to inspire children's creativity.


• Buff Baughan - Director Storyfest www.storyfest.co.uk
"Paul Stickland is a creative powerhouse and we have been so lucky to have him with us at Storyfest for the past two years.  His workshops have been hugely popular, delighting children with his incredible pop-up books and his iconic dinosaurs, and inspiring and encouraging them to create wonderful works of their own.  
Feedback from the children and their parents has been tremendous and his events are always the festival "hot ticket" - a great testament to his wonderful enthusiasm and engaging personality.  
He is always developing new ideas and is open to suggestions for tailored events - this year he created two amazing giant dinosaurs - our now treasured Storysaurs - for the children to decorate.  We would always jump at the chance to have a Paul Stickland event at Storyfest."


• Sally Gardner, Fairchildes Primary School, Croydon
"Paul attended our school for 3 days this July as part of our Pop-Up Festival.  We are so glad he came!  Paul brings sheer enthusiasm with him. 
Every child feels like an important part of his workshops.  He speaks with such excitement and energy the children were caught up in his ideas and listened as he showed them what it really is like to be a successful author and paper engineer.  He knows how to speak with children at their level and completely held their attention. He is very funny too and entertained the children with stories and funny ideas!  The curved pop-up monsters he made with them went in all sorts of directions.  They were experimenting and trying out all sorts of ideas - lots of creativity and googly eyes!  When it came to looking at the children's work we held an awards assembly - Paul led this with our Headteacher and made the children feel successful and valued their work so sincerely.  A pleasure!  Thanks Paul!"


• Anne Marley - Authors Aloud UK - Ex -Head of Children's, Youth and Schools Library Service for Hampshire.
"Paul Stickland visited two Hampshire Libraries on February 14th to launch our membership campaign, which featured one of his dinosaurs from Dinosaur Roar on the new membership card.
His visits were a fantastic success, with over 100 children and their carers attending the event in the morning at Fareham. He talked to the Under 8s and drew dinosaurs for them and encouraged them to participate and they had a wonderful time. The parents enjoyed it too! He kept their attention throughout and was a pleasure to deal with as far as arrangements were concerned."


• Victoria Bridgeman-Sutton - Leweston Prep School Dorset
"The new Leweston Prep Library was officially opened on Friday by Paul Stickland, the author and artist who lives in Sherborne.  He spent the whole morning at the school and not only explained his craft and read some of his most famous books, such as Dinosaur Roar, but also ran pop-up workshops for the children.  The children loved trying their hand at the art of pop-ups and many said that it was a great opportunity and the 'coolest day ever!'

"I found it inspiring because I want to be  an author when I grow up and I really love art.  It was amazing and I enjoyed the stories behind his books and the pop-up books themselves were fascinating!" commented Eliza Harwood, Year 6.  

The new library is already proving to be a fantastic resource for the school and of great benefit to the pupils.  There are now two new additions to the Library because Paul kindly donated signed copies of his books.  The whole occasion was a wonderful way to finish the first half term of the new school year."



• James Savile - Headmaster - Leweston Prep School, Dorset
"Having taught Paul's children a few years ago, I invited him in to run a workshop in our school and we chose to have a pop up book workshop. Paul came in with not just his books but a wealth of experience and enthusiasm. The children were enthralled by his books and imagination and they happily began their journey into the world of pop up books. Paul led them all through the activity and wonderful designs were created. He was very natural with the children and spent a lot of time with them signing books.
 
I would thoroughly recommend Paul to any school which would like to enthuse its children. With so many books under his belt such as Dinosaur Roar and Big Bug Little Bug (both of which my own children have really enjoyed), Paul has a great deal to pass on as an author/illustrator."

• Jemma Harvey-Jones - Book Day 2013 - St John's International School Sidmouth
"The Junior School were very fortunate in being able to meet and work closely with the author and illustrator Paul Stickland last week. Paul spends a lot of time out on the road giving author visits and pop-up book workshops for children of all ages and abilities, across the world. He is the author illustrator and pop up designer of many very popular children's books including Dinosaur Roar, Ten Terrible Dinosaurs, The Christmas Bear, Truck Jam, Big Dig and many more. The most remarkable things about Paul is his passion for his work, we couldn’t help but catch the bug too and were keen to get started on our own creative efforts! He gave us tasks to perform related to writing and we learnt more about how to develop our own writing. He gave us great advice and we enjoyed having the opportunity to talk to him."
So what did the children get up to?
"Years 5 and 6 participated in a session focussing on the process of writing a story, considering where to start – story, image or character? Paul explained about the benefits of a good publishing house and the importance of a good editor. Pupils had the opportunity to ask questions on all sorts of topics including how drafts get edited and what happens when things go wrong! Things got messy when they started making their own pop-ups – but I must admit, some really fabulous creations seemed to grow out of nowhere!
Years 3 and 4 took part in a workshop considering short stories – Paul spoke to the children about how to write a short story in a certain amount of words and got the children to do this too, helping them to create their own roughs. The children had the opportunity to get some quality one-to-one support from a professional and managed to uncover all sorts of tricks of the trade.
Years Reception,1 and 2 enjoyed a fantastic story telling session led by Paul. Teachers and children alike, sat spellbound, listening to the captivating narratives. They learnt all about illustrating and drawing, word play, rhyming and alliteration!"
"I was most impressed by the way in which Paul introduced the pupils to new ways of thinking about books, he was able to inspire the children with their own written work – I couldn’t ask more from a guest that to enthuse pupils to exercise their own creative skills. Overall, a very valuable experience and we look forward to Paul visiting us again to tell us all about his exciting new ventures including transferring his books from page to screen! Thank you everyone for participating with such enthusiasm in World Book Day and well done for the imaginative work that you produced!"

• From a pupil’s perspective - Paul Stickland’s Visit to St John’s International School, Sidmouth
"On Tuesday 12th March I had the pleasure of meeting Paul Stickland, an amazing all-round writer and illustrator. Towards the end he also taught us how to make some simple, yet amazing pop ups – another feature of a number of his books for children.
The workshop started off with Paul explaining the process he went through to transform his books from an idea in his head to the final published article. He spoke to us about his book ‘The Christmas Bear’, a book that truly demonstrates Paul’s talent for illustrations, although he said that the book almost drove him potty because of all the intricate details he had to add, apparently it also ruined his eyesight! He also showed us his most popular book, Dinosaur Roar. This is a rhyming book and illustrated with plain backgrounds and multi-coloured, extraordinary dinosaurs – the ‘roughs’ of this book that he brought with him were very interesting!
Towards the end of the workshop Paul showed us how to make some relatively straightforward pop-ups ourselves. Both classes then created pop-ups using card, sticky tape and glue which was really fun!
Overall I loved the experience and everyone else did too, we can’t wait to get started on some of our own creations." Written by Holly.