KQ Private View: Quentin Blake's Gifted

There are few artists in the World as universally loved as Sir Quentin Blake. To say his name is to conjure instant recognition of his distinctive style and to recall a moment from your own childhood. If an image can say a 1000 words, then a drawing by Blake can tell an entire story!

This summer, join the Knowledge Quarter for this exclusive virtual private view and immerse yourself in an exhibition that fuses artists and writers across generations and art forms, with creativity sparking creativity in turn. See an incredible gift of works from Sir Quentin Blake, read newly commissioned poetry that responds to his drawings as part of the Foundling’s programme of live and digital events – What do you think about when you think about nothing? – curated by children’s author and illustrator, Lauren Child CBE.

Blake and Child are both Foundling Fellows, working with the museum to transform young lives through creative action. Given the growing crisis in children’s mental health The Foundling hope to create opportunities which reflect on the importance of the arts in supporting children’s wellbeing.

Join Director of the Foundling Museum, Caro Howell, for this guided tour through the 24 large-scale drawings which form two emotive series, Children and Dogs, and Children, Birds & Dogs, the latter made especially for the exhibition and never seen before.

The exhibition reverses Blake’s iconic process of illustration, by setting words to his images. Long-time collaborator Michael Rosen and writers Opefoluwa Sarah Adegbite, Jackie Kay, Yomi Sode, 4 BROWN GIRLS WHO WRITE (Roshni Goyate, Sharan Hunjan, Sunnah Khan and Sheena Patel) and Ben Westwood, have created poems in response to the drawings, which take you on an imaginative journey into a wide range of feelings and experiences of childhood.

Caro Howell is Director of the Foundling Museum. Previously, she was Head of Education & Public Events at the Whitechapel Gallery, where she oversaw the construction and programming of major new education spaces and project galleries as part of the Gallery’s expansion. She has worked as an independent museum education consultant in the UK and abroad, developing projects that explore issues of advocacy, interpretation and access to the arts. She joined the Tate Modern’s set-up team in 1997 where she formulated its access and audience development strategy, and developed Raw Canvas, London’s first peer-led museum programme for 15-23 year olds. She has developed a number of award-winning resources for disabled people including i-Map (2002) at the Tate, the UK’s first online art resource for blind and partially sighted people, which received a BAFTA. Caro Co-Chairs the Women Leaders in Museums Network and sits on the Exhibition Advisory Groups of the Charterhouse and Two Temple Place.