Story Week at Ainsdale

In February half term Ainsdale NNR put on a story week. This included two days of separate family story trails, “The Gruffalo” on Tuesday 15th and “Riddles Rhymes and Storytelling” lead by professional storyteller Tom Goodale on Wednesday 16th.

Each day two sessions where run, 11am-12:30pm and 1:30pm-3pm. I put myself down to volunteer for The Gruffalo event, taking photos in the morning session and video recording the afternoon session.

I thought this could be a good opportunity to record some of the educational events that happen at Ainsdale and maybe produce illustration’s from these afterwards as part of my project.

As I am involved with the Project Dirt Liverpool site, I thought it would be good to try and advertise the story week events coming up to the members. I decided I would create a blog post on the site with a headline image that advertises the events and also shows my current design work for Ainsdale. This would be a good way to show my work of and at the same time advertise Ainsdale NNR’s educational events to a wide local audience that have interests in nature and environment

As it was the week before half term I needed to get the blog post and image produced quickly. This was good as it got me making quick decisions about my collage and I put together an image with some hand drawn lettering in no time at all. This was good practice for my development of my final collages. This Blog post was also featured on the front page of the site for the first weekend of half term and was mentioned in their regular email newsletter which is all great for trying to get recognition.
The Gruffalo day went really well and was fully booked. Volunteers and Natural England staff dressed up and played the parts of different creatures from the Gruffalo including the snake, fox, owl, mouse and narrator.

I painted their faces before hand and they went out in the woods and hid in different places to be found by the children along the way.

Eva played the part of the mouse along with the children and it was great to see that many children (and parents!) had come in character with painted whiskers and handmade ears.

The children where really engaging with the forest surroundings and enjoying being outdoors collecting all sorts of things form the forest floor and participating joyfully in the activities along the walks.

As part of my volunteer role I went around all the parents at the start of each session and got them to fill in consent forms for any photos that are included on this post.

The colours of Ainsdale NNR

As well as producing an educational colouring in sheet for Ainsdale Nature Reserve, I also wanted to be able to complete some work where I could show of the colour of Ainsdale myself.
From my volunteer work helping out at educational events I found myself learning about the rare and colourful creatures that are found in the dune habitats. While face painting It was great to see the children flicking through the FSC (field studies council) guides wanting to find out about the colours of the insects they where gong to be painted as. This made me wonder what other simple ways I could use my design skills to help children engage more with nature and learning.

While completing the line drawings for the colouring in sheets I also started drawing and using watercolour to bring the creatures to life a bit more in my sketchbook too.

When visiting Eva (Community Outreach Adviser at Ainsdale NNR) I showed her my colouring in sheets and discussed with her my ideas for also producing a set of colourful, educational collages for the reserve. I showed her my sketchbook and also brought along “Amelia’s Anthology of Illustration” by Amelia Gregory, where I had found many inspiring collages on the theme of nature. One particularly inspiring illustrator I found featured in the book was the work of Mia Overgaard, http://www.miaovergaard.com/

She draws animals very realistically adding lots of mixes of colour with the pencil drawings to create very striking and beautiful pieces. I draw best when I draw realistically and was worrying that my drawings might not appeal to younger children that much as they can sometimes engage better with more cartoon style drawings. So seeing Mia’s work made me think that adding lots of colour and giving the piece a kind of fairytale style may also work well at stimulating children’s imaginations.

Eva gave me a list of lots more creatures and plants that she would love to see painted and that would keep me occupied. While I was visiting Ainsdale I also took the opportunity to take lots of photographs to get a feel for the landscape so I could create some habitat drawings for my collages.

I managed to get some good aerial shots from up high on one of the sand dunes. I printed of lots of the photos I took and blue tacked them to my wall so I could get a better perspective looking at them and motivate me to start some paintings. Some of the aerial shots I was able to place over the top of each other to form a big panorama photo of the landscape. I decided to get my easel out and roughly paint this to get me started!

Volunteer work for Natural England

At the moment I am working on a project for Natural England. This is based on volunteer work I am currently involved with at their Ainsdale Sand Dunes National Nature Reserve.


Through my volunteer work I have helped out at educational craft events on the reserve. These include helping out with activities such as face painting, identifying and teaching about the creatures on the reserve and different craft activities involving the use of natural materials with the children.

Through this experience I have recently produced some colouring in sheets for the reserve which include 10 of the main creatures/plantlife found at the Ainsdale dune habitats.

These colouring in sheets started out as A4 printable sheets with 1-3 creatures/plants on each. Through discussing with my tutor I have now developed them into a giant fold-out colouring in sheet. This adds to the playfulness of them. He had suggested that young children like to roll around on big sheets of paper and it gives more interaction. I also thought doing it on a larger scale could be a good idea with my degree show not long of.

I have added a habitat background for all the elements to be incorporated into with facts and headings for each. The sheet is folded into 6 with each section containing 2 creatures or plants. The top right square will be the front cover when folded up. I was also thinking that maybe it could be cut up into sections and children can work on different parts of the picture each having 2 creatures/plants to tackle then it can be brought back together again to form a big collage. This would mean that each child is learning about 2 creatures and it would also involve teamwork.

I would still like to develop the text further to make it look more playful. I would also like to add my website (when i finally make one) to the bottom of the sheet so as to get continual recognition for my work. It feels great to be designing something that has such a worthwile purpose and is involved in education and nature. The staff at Ainsdale Nature Reserve are very pleased with the sheets and they will be used often in educational events. I am hoping to be able to get some photos of them being used for my documentation of the project.