Tag Archives | Kirstenbosch

Winter Wonders 2016 Kirstenbosch Botanical Gardens

At Winter Wonders on 30 June I read from my books Mister King’s Incredible Journey and Mister Sengi’s Very Big Friend. It was a combination of a book reading and a drawing workshop.

Running workshops with adults can be hard, especially if you give them paper and ask them to draw something. Running workshops with kids can be even harder if the group has a spread of age groups. Four year olds are very different to six year olds. Older children can seem sceptical and disinterested, but at the same time come up with sharp questions and observations.

But when you give them pencils and paper it usually evens out – creativity is a leveller if you are as comfortable with it as kids are. Putting pencils and paper in front of adults is another story.

I ran a design thinking workshop with adults recently where they ignored the pencils and paper. Drawing is a form of thinking that is equally as powerful as writing and talking, for some people even more so. I’d encourage more people to pick up pencils and to start drawing!