STEYNING FESTIVAL

One of my favourite festivals is the Steyning Festival because Steyning was where I was brought up. On the May Bank Holiday weekend, I did a children’s workshop based on my picture book We’re Going to Build a Dam in the lovely garden at the back of Steyning bookshop. Here we all are in the marquee; I had a great audience – very responsive and imaginative.

In this part of the workshop, after looking at original artwork, the children have puppet characters and are building a dam out of card cut-outs of boulder, driftwood, pebbles, sand and seaweed. The pieces have velcro on the back and stick easily onto a board covered in black fabric.

Then, after the crab has pinched the dog’s tail and the dog has grabbed its favourite piece of wood out of the dam, there’s the fun of the dam all coming apart.

At the end the children drew their own dams.This is Camilla Fielder’s beautifully drawn dam with the crab 

and this lovely picture was done by her younger brother, Oscar.