CHARITABLE TRUST
An Orange Beak Evening with Thereza Rowe
Colin McHenry | April 2024
The Charitable Trust recently sponsored tickets to a lecture: An Orange Beak Evening with Thereza Rowe.
Thereza Rowe is an author, illustrator, print-maker and cat-whisperer.
The organiser, Orange Beak Studio, is an award winning team of children's book creatives which offers one-to-one tutorials, mentoring, portfolio surgeries, workshops and talks.
Here's some very appreciative feedback from students who attended Thereza's talk:
Thank you for the ticket to last week's Orange Beak talk. It was an interesting and insightful session. It was great to hear about Thereza's journey into making books and her art processes. Very inspiring!
Best wishes,
Annie McGeeMany thanks to Wynkyn de Worde for sponsoring my ticket to the Orange Beak talk last night by Thereza Rowe. I found it so interesting and inspiring and I’m really glad I could be there. Teresa generously shared her background and influences, as well as her current projects and artistic practice. I’ve come away with some wonderful ideas to feed into my own work as an illustrator, especially that of keeping a visual library of shape, colour and pattern. I enjoyed learning about her use of screen printing and feel inspired to give that a go also. I’m so glad I could be ther – I wouldn’t have been able to without your generous support, so thank you.
Kind regards,
Rachael BaylissMy name is Suna, I’m a student illustrator working on my first children’s picture book. Thank you very much for the opportunity to attend the talk. I found the evening very informative and fun. Mostly what I loved about it was that Thereza was very open about her process, and relaxed. It made me feel that I could develop my own work by just not being too precious with it, and experimenting more. Her work was vibrant, fun and very experimental, which helped her develop as an artist – I'm certainly going to try this in my own work. The best part that I took away was when she said that her mental health comes first, and that she does not work for social media. This made me feel that it’s okay to put boundaries down when promoting yourself as an artist/illustrator, and to engage at a level that feels okay for health and wellbeing. Thank you so much again! It was wonderful.
Best wishes,
Suna Sezer
Double your money and try to get rich*
Colin McHenry | April 2024
Members may be aware that we make a regular donation to the St.Bride Foundation, via the wonderful Becky Chilcott, with the money being used to help students to attend talks for free.
This year with a little financial hokery-pokery, we were able to double the money donated, thanks to the St. Bride Foundation taking part in the Big Give: Arts for Impact campaign, where all donations were match funded.
*For those members who didn’t watch ITV in the 60s, ‘Double your money’ was Hughie Green's immortal catch phrase on the show of the same name.
Apprenticeship
Colin McHenry | April 2024
The Charitable Trust has been sponsoring an apprenticeship by Charlotte Carpenter, who has been producing beautiful letterpress printed books under the expert eye of our current Vice Chair, Matt Mackenzie, at his Paekakariki Press.
Publications include There you are – poems by Roger Huddle, and My Lover as Houdini by Robert Seatter.
Birmingham Design Festival
Catherine Dixon | July 2023
The Charitable Trust were pleased to be a Community Sponsor of the Birmingham Design Conference held in June.
At our January luncheon earlier in the year, the two founders of Birmingham Design, Luke Tonge and Daniel Alcorn, had shared with the Society their vision for hosting the conference, along with other festivals and workshops.
So it was fantastic to be able to help them fulfil their ambition of supporting a community of young people to realise their potential in the creative industries.
As Community Sponsors our funding helps to ensure the conference remains as accessible as possible by covering ticket costs for students who would otherwise be unable to attend.
Gail Anderson talk at St Bride Library
Catherine Dixon | May 2023
The Charitable Trust were pleased to be able to sponsor student tickets for the talk Hard work and dumb luck: 39 years of work and play by legendary American designer Gail Anderson hosted by the Friends of St Bride back in May.
Gail generously shared projects and insights from a career across many of the most senior editorial design positions in New York. Yet her presentation never felt overwhelming or intimidating as talks by successful practitioners sometimes can. Rather Anderson opened out her observations to allow her audience to reflect with her on the many challenges a young designer now faces and offered advice and tips on how to flourish both as a designer and a human being in the creative industries.
In the words of one of the first-year design students who attended:
‘Thank you for giving me and the rest of the students the opportunity to hear from such a legend in the industry, it was really empowering and such a cool insight.
The thing that stuck with me after that talk was when Gail said ‘reinvention is personal growth’; and her advice to not stick to the current ‘trends’ but create designs that would work and look good not just today but the day after and the day after that.
Thank you again for sharing the tickets for this talk.
Nicole’
Not only, but also
Colin McHenry | March 2023
Those of us who were at last year’s (2022) AGM would have heard that our illustrious Margaret Hall stood down after thirty-five years as Chairman of the Charitable Trust.
Her calm, efficient guiding hands have enabled the Trust to help hundreds of design students. We all raised our glasses, cheered, clapped and hats and canes were thrown in the air as she was presented with a beautiful pair of bookends expertly designed and carved by Carol Kemp.
We also said farewell to our Honorary Treasurer Stephen Brough whose sterling (literally) work has kept our reserves healthy and balanced. Stephen’s involvement did not stop at the finances as he was heavily involved with the quiz evenings and was a wonderful supplier of books to the Christmas raffle.
Unfortunately Stephen wasn’t at the AGM but rest assured an equally splendid pair of bookends will be presented when we all next meet.
Supercondensed
Colin McHenry | November 2022
The Charitable Trust were pleased to sponsor almost 50 students from around the country to attend the Typocircle’s SuperCondensed one-day student festival, on 19 October 2022.
The Trust also contributed to the printing costs of the splendid poster, shown opposite.
HOW WE HELP STUDENTS
The Society’s Charitable Trust assists in the education of future generations who will be involved in printing and related activities. It provides bursaries to enable students to attend lectures and conferences, and it sponsors apprenticeships and other educational programmes.
The Trust is trying particularly hard to help students in these Covid times. Recent activity has included sponsoring the cataloguing of the London Centre of Book Arts library and contributing generously to the St Bride Library crowdfunding campaign.
With Letter Exchange taking its lectures online and making the recordings of these lectures available to ticket holders for a week after they’re broadcast, the Trust has agreed to sponsor 10 tickets per talk. In this brave new world the Trust is also aiming to build up a database of students that Wynkyn de Worde could invite to join our Zoom meetings.
In October the Society was the grateful recipient of a £100 donation from Mrs Haviland, in memory of her husband Simon, which was passed on to the Trust.
The Charitable Trust sponsored some students who attended a talk by leading illustrator Rebecca Green organised by the Orange Beak Studio, here are some of their very appreciative comments:
“I am so very grateful for the sponsored place at Rebecca Greene's talk! I am only just starting out as a self published author so her talk greatly benefitted me by giving me an insight into an illustrator's world and gave me exposure to an artist's mind, something I wouldn't have experienced otherwise. I will be using what I learnt in my future projects especially when I engage with illustrators to help me illustrate my books.”
Regards Sheena
“I'm SO grateful for the sponsorship that allowed me to attend the Rebecca Green talk. I've been struggling a lot recently with personal and financial matters so it was such a wonderful surprise to learn that I had won a ticket. The talk was fantastic and so inspiring. I've been a big fan of Rebecca's for a while and it was fascinating to learn about her life and her process. Thank you so much”
Best Wishes Emma
“I am pleased to confirm that from the outset Orange Beak had advertised that The Wynkyn de Worde Charitable Trust had sponsored the place I received at the Rebecca Green talk. I was absolutely delighted to have been the recipient of this place, as I am in the early stages of development of my own book, and am mostly reliant on free resources such as the library in my research. I very rarely have the disposable income needed to cover the costs of CPD and other professional events. I am a self-employed artist and illustrator and also work for an arts charity part-time. The talk itself was fantastic and I felt very lucky to have been sponsored to attend. Thank you so much for this opportunity and I would greatly encourage your intention to support other students in the future - this meant a lot to me.”
All the best and kindest wishes, Zuzia
THE BIG NUMBERS
The Charitable Trust was established in 1985 to promote excellence in all fields of the graphic arts through grants to educational institutions, students and young members of relevant trades. It provides bursaries to enable students to attend lectures and it sponsors apprenticeships and awards.
Apprenticeships
The Trust offers sponsorship for an annual apprenticeship to students of disciplines respecting the membership and interests of the Society, concerning the graphic arts. The grants, normally given directly to the student, to cover living expenses and cost of materials to work with a professional on a one-to-one basis for a concentrated period of perhaps a week or fortnight or individual days. The ‘masters,’ often members of the society, usually give their time on a pro bono basis. Apprenticeships have been awarded to two student graphic designers, a type designer, a letter carver and more recently two letterpress printers.
Awards
The Trust funds several three-month residency awards each year at the London Centre for Book Arts. Students given the award get access to all of the facilities at LCBA along with a stipend for materials to produce a self-initiated project (book/print/publication) from start to finish. They also participate in workshops and peer learning activities.
Bursaries
The Trust offers bursaries enabling students to attend some of the lectures for professionals in the lettering arts organised by the Letter Exchange, held at the Art Workers’ Guild. On average some forty students benefit from this each year.
Lectures
The Trust directly sponsors one or more lectures each year, held at the St Bride Institute and occasionally at The Royal Society of Arts. These are attended by as many as 130 students. Speakers have included: Paul Bommer, Chris Bounds, Matthew Carter RDI, Oliver Chapman, Fred Deakin, Alistair Hall and Sharon King-Chai.
Seminars
The Trust has for years covered the cost of one or two students attending seminars organised by The Edward Johnston Foundation, which is dedicated to promoting public awareness of calligraphy and the lettering arts. With the new link-up between the Foundation and the Craft Study Centre in Farnham, the Trust will be exploring opportunities to sponsor students in their combined activities.
Sponsorship
The Trust sponsors students to attend events organised by the Typographic Circle. They stage a variety of type and typographic events including a programme of monthly lectures by well-known members of the profession. Our sponsorship allows some forty students to attend every year.
THE TRUST OFFICERS
CHAIR
Colin McHenry
HONORARY TREASURER
Martin Morgan
EDUCATIONAL LIAISON