Gemma White 

Volunteering for University of East Anglia's FLY (Festival of Literature for Young People), I hosted a one hour workshop encouraging students to illustrate their own book cover. The students I hosted were in a creative writing session prior, however I created my own prompts in case the students wanted a challenge or if they did not want to illustrate their story. I let them take control of which. 

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The session began with a quick 5 minute looking at books I loaned from the Millennium Library in the Forum (to which we were situated), and to get the students thinking about what the illustrated cover target audience is and why. After this session I handed out the prompts; two genre's to which they could incorporate both or choose a single genre, one age group, a gender and a generated title, whilst explaining these weren't concrete. They were allowed to change what they were given as these were after all only prompts to give them some inspiration, as well as the chosen books from the initial 5 minute session.

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The following 10 minutes consisted of me explaining the importance of the design and composition, that the title and author has to be legible and to use appropriate colour and themes whilst sketching their designs. Then the rest of the session was the students creating their book covers using collage materials and pens supplied before them. My reasoning for choosing collage materials was to not demoralise any of the students of their creative ability if they feel their drawings aren't perfect. Collage is a great way to communicate through shapes, colour and texture and all the students seemed capable of creating this way.  I spent the res of the session ensuring I spoke with every student, listen to their concepts and helping with any struggles they might be having.