Jennie Maizels was already enjoying a career most creative people would die for. Born to artist parents they encouraged her creative development and her first professional work was designing the window displays for the like of Harvey Nichols department store and the national chain of Body Shop stores.
From there she pivoted, seemingly effortlessly, to creating a massively successful series of children’s books and crossover pop-up books such as Pop-up London and Pop-up New York with her work selling into the multiple millions of copies.
Jennie’s career took another major pivot when she became inspired to revolutionise how we teach art and created “The Sketchbook Club”. Despite having criss-crossed the whole of the UK over the years somehow this will be her first visit to Newcastle Gateshead where we’ve invited this irrepressible creative mind to talk about her passion in teaching art and why non-artists are the ones who can get the most out of her methodology and work.
Not only will the Maizels Method help you learn how to draw; it could help you learn how to learn in new ways and generate curiosity & experimentation in areas you’ve never considered exploring previously.
Jennie Maizels’ Bio
Jennie Maizels’ storied career began at Central St. Martins School of Art where she studied Illustration. Her first commission was to make the window displays for Harvey Nichols department store as part of London Fashion Week which led to creating nationwide window displays for The Body Shop and Dillons Bookstores.
After leaving college she went on to collaborate with Kate Perry, a hugely talented children’s book writer. Over the next 16 years they created eight books together which collectively became smash hits selling over two million copies worldwide. “The Great Grammar Book” was nominated for Children’s Book of the Year 1999 and “The Global Garden” was winner of the Aventis Prize 2006.
Jennie’s bestselling and award winning ‘Pop-up London Book’ was the winner of the SLA award and ‘Pop-up New York’ Book and more recently (collaborating with The Reduced Shakespeare Company ) ‘Pop-up Shakespeare’ was another highly popular title in the series.
In 2015 Jennie came up with the idea of Sketchbook Club as a revolutionary way to teach art which she describes as “literally like following a recipe”. Sketchbook Club has become a huge success featuring in The Guardian, The Telegraph and The Simple Things Magazine. More recently her methods are being used as a powerful wellbeing tool in Maggie’s Cancer Centres, the NHS and at numerous Corporate events.
The WInchester University Psychology Department are currently using Jennie’s methodology, ‘The Maizels Method’, as part of a major research study into the wellness benefits generated by learning and creating art by non-artists.
