Saturday 12th November saw the hall at Hayes church turned into an art room adorned with posters that Yvonne had brought with her to inspire us and illustrate the different techniques that could be used to create a poster.
We started the session by looking at the examples and seeing which we liked and thinking about what it was that made them stand out for us. Yvonne also talked about how the ones we chose were made and the sort of materials we could use for poster making. Many of the examples were made by recycling things like magazine pictures, wrapping paper and other scraps we'd normally throw away. 'Walk in the Light' is made using torn magazine pictures in various shades of green for the leaves, the trunks are different shades of brown paper with crayon to give the impression of bark and the words are cut using a stencil. For those of us with access to a computer it was suggested we could print them out in very large size and that gives the opportunity to use lots of different fonts.
Then came the tricky bit for most of us - coming up with an idea and translating it into something that would catch the eye. This was when we discovered why Yvonne recommends poster making being a group activity. It is surprising how just talking an idea through with someone helps to clarify it and, when you're stuck about how to implement an idea, other people can help there too. As you can see from the pictures below we produced some very good results for our first attempts. Needless to say they look better in colour and hopefully some of you saw them displayed in our churches. If not, look out for them in the future.
Yvonne and her assistant, Mary, were so encouraging and supportive of our efforts that I suspect our results wouldn't have been nearly so good without them. Hopefully the trip from Jersey and Edinburgh (9 hours on an overnight coach!) respectively didn't feel like a waste to them because the 20 plus people who attended over the course of the day certainly appreciated it and many were already discussing how to take what they'd learnt back to their churches. Let's hope we see some very interesting poster appearing around the Circuit and on our own notice boards in the future.
Many thanks to all those who made it such a successful day with all their support and practical help over the course of the weekend.
If you're interested in finding out more about these workshops, Yvonne can be contacted via her website at www.postersplus.org.uk.
