Jez Alborough: Children’s Author on Creativity & Inspiration

Jez Alborough 00:00:39

Smiling is infectious. You catch it like the flu. When someone smiled at me today, I started smiling too. I passed around the corner and someone saw my grin. When he smiled, I realized I passed it on to him. I thought about my smile and then I realized its worth. A single smile like mine could travel right around the earth. If you feel a smile begin, don't leave it undetected. Let's start an epidemic quick and get the world infected.

Mark Taylor 00:01:13

Hello, my name is Mark Taylor and welcome to the Education on Far podcast. The place for creative and inspiring learning from around the world. Listen to teachers, parents and mentors share how they are supporting children to live their best authentic life and are proving to be a guiding light to us all. Jez Albert is an author and illustrator of over 45 books for children. His Eddie and the Bear trilogy, which began with the much loved where's my Teddy in 1992, has sold nearly four and a half million copies and was made into a BAFTA award winning animated television special and series. Others include Duck in the Truck and Hug, a powerful and touching book of only three words about a baby chimpanzee who loses his mum. We also discuss his game called Number Wonders and the insights of a life as a creative and also as a fellow musician. Hi Jaz, thank you so much for joining us here on the Education on Far podcast. Is a fellow self employed person, is a fellow creative person. I'm really excited about this and as someone who doesn't know anything about writing, I'm sort of really keen to understand that sort of journey of being an author and, and how that creativity is sort of manifested in other things as well in terms of your passion for music and, and whatnot too. So yeah, thanks so much for being here.

Jez Alborough 00:02:30

Thank you for having me, Mark.

Mark Taylor 00:02:31

Yeah, so why don't we start on, on that author tack. Tell us the types of books that you've done and why they were important for you.

Jez Alborough 00:02:40

Yes. So I went to art school and I always drew and I found out that the fact that I drew when I was a kid, I drew and I drew speech bubbles. I draw a character, then I'd have what they were saying. So there's the beginnings of moments and stories there and I liked being able to do both. And when I was growing up I really enjoyed the Rupert the Bear books and the way they had the image and a rhyme. Well, actually they had a longer bit of text to tell a story and they also had a rhyming couplet. I don't know whether you remember them but. And I Always thought, why have you got all that long? Takes the two. The couplet that rhymes does it better. Beautifully, succinctly. And so I. When I got to art school, at the end of art school, I didn't know what I was going to do, but I came up with a character of a polar bear. And this rhyming couplet came to me. I showed it to a publisher and they said, that's, that's nice. What can you do? Expand on it. So I expanded and played with it. Anyway, I ended up doing. My sort of speciality became illustrating picture books for young kids. And a lot of what I did was in rhyme. I love that marriage of words and pictures. What the words say, what's best to say in the picture. What's best to say in the words? Because sometimes the picture does it all. Well, words are extraneous sometimes, you know, words are needed to move the story along. But how much text? What words? Exactly. So I like the craft of that. So, yeah, I've been making picture books since 84 when my first one came out.

Mark Taylor 00:04:38

Fantastic. And so take us through some of the names of those books and sort of the journey through it and if they sort of developed as you sort of got older or more experienced or what, that sort of journey.

Jez Alborough 00:04:50

Yeah, I had many years at the beginning, I had about seven years where I was able to get books published, but nothing happened. They didn't sell well and. And I did reach a point where you think, am I meant to be doing this? And then suddenly one of my books called where's my Teddy in 91 came out and that changed everything. And that it, it was a big seller and people seem to like it. And I think what happened was that my creativity, what I was doing kind of really came together in a way where it worked. It suddenly started really working better. So that became a series of three books, Eddie and the Bear, also an animation in the end. So there's that series and then there's. In 2000 I did a book called Hug, which is my best selling book. And that became a series two. Interestingly, that was very few words. In fact, in the Hug book there's only about three words, I think. So this was a challenge to tell it with, you know, like I was just saying less is more often, you know, and it's all then about the illustrations and getting over the feeling of the story, the feelings of the characters in the expressions of the characters. And if you get that right, people can read that. So I find that quite fascinating. Yeah. And then I did a series called Duck in the Truck as well, which is another one of my big series, and that turned into quite a few books.

Mark Taylor 00:06:24

And how does the. The art form of what you were doing influence sort of the age appropriateness of the book and sort of vice versa? Did you sort of think it needs to be this way? Because I'm think about this sort of age group for the people that are going to be reading it and being part of this. Or was it the art form that kind of dictated that, if you sort of. See what I mean?

Jez Alborough 00:06:46

Yeah. I mean, I would come up with characters like the hug character is a chimpanzee. So you're drawing a chimpanzee and you've basically got to find out what your way of doing a chimpanzee is and what you feel comfortable doing and what's natural to you. So that's really what dictates it. You just play and see what comes. Interestingly in different books with different characters, I have quite different styles. So the Where's My Teddy book was drawn with a crayon and then watercolor painting, whereas with Hug was with a black line and with these marker pens filling in. So, yeah, different characters seem to want to be drawn in different ways is all I can say, really. Yeah, I mean, the main thing you're heading for is naturalness. So if you feel natural and at ease with the style, it's going to be a nice, better drawing, you know.

Mark Taylor 00:07:48

And I'm curious from a kind of a professional background, as it were. Like you say the early stages, you know, not getting the published or having to not quite sure if this is how it was going to go forward. What you kind of thinking at that point, other than maybe I should be doing something else, but kept you kept that passion running. Because I think there are lots of people who often think I'd like to do that, but that's not a career or. I know this is a passion and I think it could be a career, but how long do I keep that going? I suppose there's the practical things for that, but I think there's that innate idea of being creative and artistic, which I can identify with as being a musician, that, you know, it doesn't look the same every day, but you need to put your all into it in order to make it as successful as possible and then hope things kind of work out for it in the end.

Jez Alborough 00:08:36

I think it comes down to doing what you love to do. There's a sort of level before any commercial idea comes in of I always think of this as a Van Gogh principle. I would do this anyway. I love to do this, you know. So I think, you know, I think that was true. I drew from very early age and I. And I love drawing and I love making stories up. I love stories. So, yeah, sometimes life interjects and says, yeah, but the world doesn't want this, and that's tough. But I think you just go with the flow and you end up where you end up. You know, some books didn't work out, so they never got made. Some books are made and they have a life. And I mean, I've. I produced in my career, I think about 44 books, and most of them aren't in. Not. I mean, I think I've got about seven or eight still in print. So they have a lifetime. And so there is that interjection of life that you can't change, you know. So I think the ideal is that the world wants what you want to do as well. Yeah, that's. That's the best you can get, isn't it? It doesn't always happen. I mean, I've had books that I love and were printed and I still really like, and I think there's as good as my bestsellers, but I didn't sell hardly any. So, yeah, it's. You never know. It makes you really appreciate when it does work.

Mark Taylor 00:10:14

Yeah. And how does that.

Jez Alborough 00:10:16

This is a bit negative.

Mark Taylor 00:10:18

No, no, no, because I. Because I find it fascinating, you know, as a musician, you know, you can. You can have your diary completely filled with a long tour or lots of successive projects, and you're like, well, this is easy. I'm just going to go to work every day for the rest of my life looking like that. And then all of a sudden you've got days, weeks, months where there's nothing going in. Yeah. And, you know, and you can be very pragmatic and very practical about that in terms of budgeting and all those sorts of things. But there also comes a point where you're like, oh, is this now completely stopped? And then all of a sudden you get a whole nother load of stuff come in as well. And that sort of ebb and flow is a. Is a real kind of something you have to be aware of. But also you also want to make sure that your artistic endeavors are fulfilled. And like you say, sometimes there's no reason why that's changed other than maybe a change of personnel at a particular organization or the economy or. Or something that's happened, and people are just putting their Finances into different place or. Yeah, whatever it happens to be. They happen to have met someone in a bar recently which meant they asked that person to do it rather than you or whatever it happens to be. And so it can be very fleeting from that point of view.

Jez Alborough 00:11:22

Yeah, yeah, it's. Yes, it's precarious. Yeah. I mean I think people, some people have great success and sort of that's their lot in life and but they don't ever experience what for example a lot of actors have where they're waiting for the call, you know and it's. That's, that's. Or some do and then they get successful. But yeah, it's tough. Yeah.

Mark Taylor 00:11:47

And I think that's. That they're important conversations sort of from an education point of view. You know, I remember sort of my career's conversation which is kind of oh, you like music, you probably need to go into the army and be in the band or whatever. There was never any sort of. It could look like this. And just understanding what a self employed person looks like in the. The implications of working and then not working and having multiple income streams in different ways and I think just sort of understanding that it happens to everybody in, in lots of these sort industries and that's okay. It doesn't need to look like I'm definitely earning this amount of money every month or I need it to look like X in order for why to take a proper course. And so I just think yeah, having those sort of discussions out in the open is important and for teachers and parents to know that and just to say, you know, let's, let's see how it goes. You know, it might look different tomorrow or next year but don't, not necessarily follow your passion if it's something you really want to dive into.

Jez Alborough 00:12:40

Yeah, I mean this is what we're talking about really is the aside of being self employed, isn't it like if you've got a regular job and income you maybe you sell your soul a bit but you've got that security and we don't have that. Yeah, but yeah, I mean I think the main thing is, I think it's important to say like when things are working and people want what you're doing and you. It's a privilege and you enjoy it and you. But you never take it for granted. Yeah, yeah.

Mark Taylor 00:13:11

And take us into that sort of the professional side of, of publishing and sort of having something which is then suddenly out there in the world. Is that something you enjoyed as well? Is it just sort of a, A Needs must in terms of the way the book's life happens to be. And. And that sort of journey.

Jez Alborough 00:13:31

I mean, I. I loved publishing my books. It's. It's this weird thing. It starts as a tiny idea in your head, and then it starts as a little scribble or a drawing. I mean, I can't. And I kept. For all my books, I kept those first sheets of drawing because I find it. It's like the genesis of the whole thing. And it's magic happening because, you know, maybe like a year later or something, there's a book, a physical book that. That becomes. And that journey is how does it go from there to there? And the fact that such a simple, small idea, you tune into it and you get the message of something here that could be something. And you have to trust that and follow it and nurture it. And then you have to find someone at the publisher, in this case, who also believes in it and can champion it enough to get the publishers, the publishing house, to take it on. So when the book comes out, it's a very magical moment because it's the end of that process. And I always remember when the first. You know, when you. You get a package and here's. This is it, the finished book has arrived. And it's always a very. Always remember. It's a very sacred moment. And you kind of go through every page very carefully, remembering every little line you made, every choice of color, every choice of word. So I found that quite a lovely thing. Yeah.

Mark Taylor 00:14:58

And how important is the relationships throughout that process? You sort of say, you know, you need somebody, the publisher, to be enthusiastic about it and sort of back you. Is that partly because of who you are and the relationship that you have as well as the book? It's like you say you've got some books which you might think are just as good as the ones that have been commercially successful in inverted commas. But for whatever reason, it's these particular ones that they've decided to take on.

Jez Alborough 00:15:26

I think even for the publishers, as an element of. I suppose it's a bit like in music, you. You can have a strong feeling, like if you make an album, this one's a single, this is going to be a hit. And sometimes that is true. And they're absolutely right. You know, from the beginning, like, I remember the first time I heard Careless Whisper by Michael. What's his name?

Mark Taylor 00:15:47

George Michael.

Jez Alborough 00:15:48

George Michael. Thinking. I mean, it wasn't big at that stage. I think that is a hit. You just know it. You could feel it and you can have that to a certain extent, I think same with books. But you still don't never know because the public decides.

Mark Taylor 00:16:07

Yeah.

Jez Alborough 00:16:08

And. But yes, you just to get it to a stage where you can print it, have it published and find out. You do need people on that side in the publishing house to believe in you and what you do. And I think if you. The good thing about having a hit book, a bestseller, is they start to believe in you. They smell money. Right. And they start to believe in you thinking, oh, this guy's got something that people want. And then we. Because they're driven by sales. It's a business.

Mark Taylor 00:16:39

Yeah.

Jez Alborough 00:16:39

And then that affords you the luxury of, you know, you can do another book with them, at least the next one. I mean, if the next one doesn't sell that your stock goes down and then in the end, if they don't want to work with you. But so the person on inside who can champion you is really important. And I had that. I mean, yeah, it's. So that becomes a very special relationship with the editor because you. They are a very important part of the creation of the book. Without them, it wouldn't happen.

Mark Taylor 00:17:14

Yeah. And I think that's so important, isn't it, across all. All walks of life. I think the personal relationship, because you're connecting on a creative level. Like I say, there's still a business element to these sorts of things as well. But you enjoy working with certain people. You want them to be part of your world and what you're trying to create. And so there's sort of an intangible kind of thing there which, you know, makes you want to get up and be part of that. Really.

Jez Alborough 00:17:37

Yeah, yeah. You're sharing. You're sharing the magic of bringing this idea into a physical form and the magic of like, oh, it's starting to work. You know, this is. Or this bit's not working. We've got to change something here together. You maybe solve the problem or you solve the problem, but they point it out or whatever. But gradually. Yeah. It's nice to share the creativity of it. Yeah, yeah.

Mark Taylor 00:18:04

From a drawing point of view, you. It's obviously something you really enjoyed from a younger age. How did that sort of progress from however early you can think about? This is something I'm enjoying doing to the kind of, oh, I'm going to go to study it when I'm sort of leaving school and that kind of thing. Because I think there are plenty of people who are like, I'm enjoying doing this. But is it Something you can do as a. As a job, but more importantly, what that sort of pathway is. And I just think from a musician's point of view, it was always that kind of, oh, I'm enjoying learning this. And now I get to play in a orchestra, in a band, and then I get to perform and I get to do this and I get to travel and all these sort of different elements of the things that made me want to then go to music college and to see where that took me. So I'm curious as how that works from your standpoint.

Jez Alborough 00:18:50

All I knew is I wanted to be an artist. I didn't really know what form. I mean, I knew I wanted to draw, but I went and did a foundation course in which you try different areas of art. You know, I could have been a sculptor or painter, I don't know, because I was painting at the time as well. And then I went to art school and then I sort of veered towards illustration and I suppose the book. I. I produced a book based on a poem I wrote. There was a pun, it was called Abundance. And it was basically a bun dance. And it was a. It was. I sort of took this thing of cakes having a dance and I wrote a poem about it. It was very silly. And then I illustrated it. That was my first real book that was actually produced and PR at college. And then your style develop. It's all about getting your own style, I suppose, and finding what that is. And you just do it and do it and do it and then appears.

Mark Taylor 00:19:49

Really, I would say, and I think that's a really important takeaway is part of it is just doing what you love and part of it is just doing the next thing, taking the next step. And it might just be the next thing that you create. It might be having a conversation with someone. But whatever feels right usually takes you in in that way. You can't necessarily see the whole journey or where that might take you, but I think just enjoying that next step and feeling like there's some progression and some learning and some growth for you is kind of a guiding light in some ways.

Jez Alborough 00:20:18

Yeah. So I've done since, you know, the picture books, different areas and I've. I was very surprised to find that I was going to create a game. I'm not a gamer or anything like that. But the illustration and the ideas I had came, came round to sort of when put together, suddenly somebody said, okay, let me explain a bit further. I was quite interested in memory and memory systems. And, you know, there's a system where you have, for example, number one is represented by candle, so there's an image that represents a number. Number two is a swan. Number number four is a sailboat. So it's this nice. And that is meant to help by having an image help you remember.

Mark Taylor 00:21:08

Yeah.

Jez Alborough 00:21:09

And so it works very well until you get past 10 and then what do you have for 34? You know, get. Starts to get complicated. And I thought, I don't know why, but I set myself the task, this was many, many years ago, of like, if I had a number for every number, so an image for every number from 1 to 100, that memory system would be. I don't know, it'd be very interesting which. Which are more inclusive. And it led me to finding, obviously, images for numbers 1 to 100 and. But each. For example, I found out that the Earth tilts at an angle of 23 degrees, which I think is quite amazing. It's like, if it didn't, we wouldn't have our seasons. And why isn't it 9 degrees or, you know, 50 degrees? It happens to be 23 and a bit. And so it's kind of quite amazing. It's a number, but it's a real fact that is of the way life works and human life works. So I thought, oh, so I could have the earth tilting at 23, 23, that would be my number 23. And then I tried to find similar things for other numbers that led me to different categories. So rather than astronomy, some were like, artistic. So, for example, Dickens wrote his first book, Pick with papers in, when he was 24 years old, which is quite amazing. So there are seven continents, so number seven is the continents. So I did that for 100 numbers and I thought that was going to be a book. I showed it to someone and they said, I think this is a game. And something went ding. So suddenly you're talking about life taking a different turn. Suddenly I entered how do you make a game? And how does that work? And that became number wonders. Yeah.

Mark Taylor 00:23:09

And take us into. Into exactly how that works. Is it a card game? What sort of. The physicalness of it.

Jez Alborough 00:23:16

Yeah. So it's a board game. I'll just show you the board quickly. I've got it here. So it's a board game. They're all the numbers with the associated images and with that are cards. So there's one card for every number, 1 to 100. And each card, I've got a big one here to show you. So, for example, here's number seven and this is. There are Seven continents, Africa, Asia, Europe, Antarctica, Australia, north and South America. So I was imagining as a child, like if you, if you learnt this or played this game when you're young, you're going to have that very, that's going to very easily go into a child's mind, you know you'd have it for your life. I mean not that that's most people know that anyway but there's different facts. So anyway that's number seven on the reverse we have five related questions to that subject of continence. So for example, what percentage of the total land area of the earth does Asia cover? So you could just guess but I've got multiple choice so there's three potential answers I'll just try with you. So would that be 15, 20 or 30% for Asia?

Mark Taylor 00:24:36

I'll go 20, 20.

Jez Alborough 00:24:39

So it's actually 30. So if you'd got that right, if you've got 30, you would advance 5 on the board. So it's a system of, you know, you throw the dice, you land on one of these numbers, you get the number one, the fact which is that and then you get a question from the back and to get the chance to advance. So yeah, that's my game number wonders.

Mark Taylor 00:25:08

I love that. Organic.

Jez Alborough 00:25:10

Promoting learning and fun.

Mark Taylor 00:25:12

Yeah, yeah, exactly, yeah. And I mean is a board gaming family. It's something which we've always really enjoyed and, and I just think like you say the way that life just takes you like say you think it was a book, someone mentions one thing, it suddenly becomes a game and that sort of organicness I find fascinating and, and in terms of that sort of creative outlet. I know music's important to you as well. Is that just because of who you are, that kind of the creativeness in that kind of bigger, bigger world or do you find that they're sort of interlinked in the way that the art and sort of the, the words were in, in the way that you started creating the books. How do you sort of, if you can explain how does that sort of feel in your mind or within your body that you then used as an expression?

Jez Alborough 00:26:01

Yeah, I think you picked up on something interesting there. I so basically many. When I was a teenager my brother bought a guitar home and he started learning and he got bored with it and I said oh that's interesting. And he made these shapes and I said what's that? And it's called a chord. What's a chord? I learned a few chords I suddenly found out with these two chords I got the first bit of a David Bowie song, you know, and it was like, oh, that's how, that's how you teach. That's how you inspire, isn't it? I always think with guitar teaching, you don't make it all technical. You say, what's the song you like? Right. Do you want to play it? And you tell them how to play it, is they're inspired, and then they get that magic feeling of, oh, I can play it. And that's the way in to learning, isn't it?

Mark Taylor 00:26:48

Yeah.

Jez Alborough 00:26:49

So anyway, I, he went on to drums, funny enough, and I, I, I had an affinity with the guitar, and so I've always played and I studied to a certain level. I mean, nothing like you. I'm not technically. I don't read music well or anything, but I studied because I was interested in the mechanics of chords and how they fitted together. So I know, you know, enough. I know enough to sort of get by. And I, for many years, I would find progressions of chords and that I liked. So I had sort of embryonic songs, but for some reason I didn't have the lyrics. They didn't come at the same time, but in 20, I think it was 15. Suddenly I got some lyrics for one song and it suddenly kind of started working. And since then I've written many songs. So you're right, it is about, you know, there's words and pictures and then there's words in the music. And I love good. So, I mean, what's good songwriting? It's different for everyone. But I love songwriting. I love the way I was listening to an Elton John concert the other day, and it started with this song, which I knew, but I didn't know that well, and it suddenly, I suddenly got it. I suddenly realized this is a great song and it's called Blue Eyes, and I never knew. It's. It's about Elizabeth Taylor. And he told the story a bit of how he came to write it. She was a friend of his, apparently. But the chords are so gorgeous. So I would then, like, look at, well, what, what's he doing in particular there that touches you? And so, you know, I increase my learning a bit here and there by doing that. But generally I'm, Yeah, I'm writing these songs, putting my own chords together and waiting for the words to come. Sometimes. Sometimes the chords have been there ages and I have just waiting for a story to go with it. A song to go with it. Yeah. So I just record them at home and I could play keyboards a little bit, and bass. So I add that. And I have a friend who's a drummer, so he. He does that side of it and he helps produce them. So.

Mark Taylor 00:29:04

Yeah, fantastic. And it's interesting the. The collaboration, or lack of collaboration in terms of being able to do the stories and the illustrations, to be able to do the lyrics and the music and. Whereas some people are kind of like, I'll do the lyrics and you can be the musician and put that together. But I like to. Yeah, exactly, exactly.

Jez Alborough 00:29:25

Yeah.

Mark Taylor 00:29:25

But having that sort of creativeness on both sides, but also having the patience in the ability to allow that to emerge, which I think is a very sort of artistic thing.

Jez Alborough 00:29:35

Yeah. I mean, it is odd sometimes where you, you. It's almost like waiting for them to arrive, you know, like I said, I've had some chord progressions around for a long time that I think, yeah, this is really nice. This is be a song, but, you know, got no idea what it's going to be about. You're waiting for something to arrive, and when it does, you could sort of say, ah, that's what you wanted to be. Now I understand. And when you look back, you think, well, of course it had to be that, but at the time you don't know.

Mark Taylor 00:30:04

Yeah.

Jez Alborough 00:30:04

So there's this kind of wonder and respect for the muse, I suppose. Yeah.

Mark Taylor 00:30:11

And. And the reason I'm. I love this conversation and why I think it's so important is the fact that I'm not sure any part of this is something which would necessarily in a school. And I think there's something about the creativity that children have maybe at home or in their own life experience, that they need to be encouraged and to hear and understand and parents and teachers to hear and understand, to sort of. However, it can be amalgamated into learning generally, like you mentioned about learning the guitar. You know, let's. Let's find out what we can do. Can we recreate this? And I think that's a really important thing, to sort of marry that creativity and the understanding with what doing you're trying to achieve and what education is sort of trying to do in that sort of more formal setting. Which is a whole different podcast as well, I'm sure.

Jez Alborough 00:30:55

Yeah. It's almost like there's two sides to it. There's the technical side where you have to. I don't know whether you find this with your percussion playing, but with me, there's the technical side of putting chords together and you can understand. You can feel something sounds good. But you can also understand why it sounds good technically to an extent, because chords can be analyzed, and the way you put them together can. And you don't need to have the technical side, but I find to understand a bit of that helps me a bit. But without the inspiration, it means nothing.

Mark Taylor 00:31:39

Yeah.

Jez Alborough 00:31:40

So some, like, I know, like McCartney doesn't. Doesn't read music and, you know. But you know, what an ear he's got. So it's just interesting that marrying if it's almost like pure creative instinct and sort of the mind and the intellect, the way you can analyze it, it's an amazing combination.

Mark Taylor 00:31:59

Yeah. And I think what you mentioned there, Paul McCartney, is really interesting because it's that sense of everyone has different skill sets as well. I mean, some people are very visual, some people learning by ear or whatever, something very natural to them. And you can. You can blend how much of that you go into in order to do your. To do your best work, so to speak, whatever that happens to be. And the thing that I find, I think that inspiration is a really important starting point. I definitely use that within my music teaching. But what I often sort of find as well, and I want to bring this back into your illustration and drawing in a moment, is the fact that my pupils will then go, this is brilliant. And now I want to play this piece. And it's marrying that. I know you're inspired because we've played something which I know is relatively simple, that we can get you going at really straight away. But what you're trying to do, there's a skill factor in here which you're not going to be able to do until there are certain technical things, bits of coordination that you need to be aware of, and sort of marrying those two things to keep the inspiration, show the development. Let them understand that in order to play this particular thing, you need to be able to do this. And I can demonstrate and show and try and explain that so that they're getting courage to keep the practice and the understanding, but not want to go, oh, no, it's too hard, I'm not going to do it. And that's a fascinating thing.

Jez Alborough 00:33:16

It is. It's a delicate balance, isn't it? Because too much technical stuff and they're going to go, oh, it's too much for me, or it's too dry or something. So you've got to kind of feed in, keep that line towards. Yeah, but I want to have the struggle to learn that bit, because I know it's going to get me there where I can play that song. I want to play. That's that fantastic song. But I Don't know how to play it. Yeah, you need to learn this chord. Okay, then it's worth me putting the energy in. Yeah. So as a teacher, what are you saying is it's. It's getting that balance right between the two?

Mark Taylor 00:33:52

Yeah, absolutely. Yeah. And so from. From a. From a drawing point of view, because I'm. As an artist, I really struggled in terms of what I had in my head compared to any marks I would never make on any kind of page or any kind of thing like that. I found the two didn't marry in a way that music did sort of speak to me in a very sort of organic way. So how did what we just sort of spoke about there, from a musical point of view happen in your experience from. From drawing and creating visual things, was it that you saw it and you gradually developed into being able to put that on paper, or were there certain techniques or understandings that sort of grew out of your interest or your learning or your knowledge or how you sort of came about being good at what you're then able to do?

Jez Alborough 00:34:39

Yeah, I think there's an element of that. What do they call it, that hundred hour theory or whatever?

Mark Taylor 00:34:43

10,000 hours?

Jez Alborough 00:34:44

Yeah, 10,000. You need more than a hundred. 10,000. Well, I. Art school, what you do, what I did, what people who like drawing did, was you had a book with you at all time, wherever you were, you'd draw. You'd see a face in a cafe and you draw them and you draw. So that has. I think that's part of the 10,000 hour thing where you just learn. There's some links being made neurologically where, you know, how do you draw a. You know, I mean, I remember even at school doing woodwork and there was technical drawings. So it's like how to draw a cylinder. You know, how did you draw a square, you know, a rhomboid or something? So it's all. It's the sort of language that you can, I guess, develop. So you can see something and see form or see light and shade. And then what happens with your style is you adapt that and transpose it into your style, your way of putting that shade in. You know, what you leave out is important. What the marks you make is important. I haven't got any artwork here, but, you know, I could get a bit of artwork and show you the decisions that you make. So I think it's just. So did I study? Yeah, I did life drawing at art school. So that's all part of honing that ability. It's the art of seeing.

Mark Taylor 00:36:10

Really?

Jez Alborough 00:36:12

Yeah. I mean, I see there's a. There's a program on which. I don't know whether you watch it, called the Portrait Artists of the Year.

Mark Taylor 00:36:20

Yep.

Jez Alborough 00:36:21

And I. I watch that every week and I'm amazed at the skill to catch the likeness. I mean, I'm not so great at doing that. Amazing skill to be able to do that. And that's just pure looking and seeing and. Yeah. Anyway, I think it developed over many years of just lots of drawing.

Mark Taylor 00:36:42

Yeah.

Jez Alborough 00:36:42

Yeah.

Mark Taylor 00:36:42

And. And I think the reason I wanted to touch on that was the. I love the word seeing, that kind of just in. I mean, from an artist's point of view, but also in terms of what's around you and what you're looking at and what life's sort of throwing at you from an experience point of view, but that's so far removed from learning facts and having to do a test. And. And it. You know, this is my timetable for the week. And. And I think just for people to understand that, especially if you are creative, that this is certainly for me as well, from a musical standpoint, it was kind of the reason I went through each day, because I knew that there would be another experiment or another experience or something else that I would get to do, which kind of really sor. I felt integral to who I was. And that isn't to say that all aspects of learning aren't important, but I think to understand that that should be created or to. For it to be at the heart of what any given person's experience is and to explain how that fits in the. The wider world. Like we said, you know, there are practical things that need to happen in there and. And all those sorts of things for that to be. For teachers and parents to understand that that can be harnessed and can be nourished and cherished in what they're doing, wherever that takes you. And then that's just back to, like you say, doing the next step, doing the next thing, and encouragement and awareness of those things. So, yeah, it's a fascinating, fascinating point of view, I think. And I think seeing kind of encapsulates that in a really beautiful way.

Jez Alborough 00:38:06

Yeah, I mean, it's. There's almost two sides to it, aren't there? There's the encouragement and the input and the teaching that the teacher can give, and then there's your own internal, like, pull to learn more, and those two kind of meet hopefully in the middle. And if you get a good teacher, of course, that really helps.

Mark Taylor 00:38:30

Yeah.

Jez Alborough 00:38:31

And then there's the fact that you can study yourself like I study, you know, music myself, or, you know, I'm learning chess as well. And there's an element sometimes of, like admitting I'm not very good at this yet, you know, and the willingness to take on. It's about seeing life as it is. You know, it's like if you're not very good at something, that's. That's fine. You don't have to be. If you want to get better, you have to put the work in. So it's not like you're negative on yourself. You're just like, oh, I need to learn more. That willingness to learn is everything, isn't it? If you've got that and you never. What I was thinking while you were talking, too, was you never stopped. You never stop learning. I mean, I don't know, like we say with chess, it's. It's obvious you could never stop learning. But like, with music, I don't know, it's. The possibilities are endless, and I love that about it.

Mark Taylor 00:39:28

Yeah.

Jez Alborough 00:39:28

Yeah.

Mark Taylor 00:39:29

I think. I think that sense that you're learning from 0 to 99 is something, you know, there's schooling in the formal side of that, but understanding how you learn and why you learn and what you're interested in and how you go about getting the information that you need beyond all of that is kind of such a key. Such a key element. And I really like that sense of being supported in what you're passionate about and in terms of what you're. In terms of what you're doing. And one of the things I often say to my pupils, and this sort of goes back to what you were saying about that journey element of it, is that if I asked you to do the two times table now, you probably do it without thinking. If I asked you to repeat the Alphabet, then you do it without thinking. And they say, yeah, well, of course I can. But I said, but when you first started learning it, that wasn't the case. You know, it took a lot of thought. And in the same way as there's part of. In my experience, it's a music teacher, it's that kind of. You can play this rhythm literally without thinking about it. Now, because we've done it for this amount of time in this particular context, but this next thing, which is suddenly feeling a little bit more tricky, is just the same thing, but repeated. And I can say, as someone who's been in the profession for sort of 25, 30 years, I use the same process because something might come across my desk And I've got to learn something. And it's like, I need to play this slowly. I need to take it one step at a time. I need to pull all of the skills that I've been using in all that time to learn something new in order to get better at it and to make it fit in. And I think when, when children specifically understand that it's an ongoing process, no matter what that new skill set is or the new thing that you're learning, there's a little light bulb that goes off and kind of, oh, yeah, because I'm going to repeat this again and I'm going to repeat it again as it was from a two times table. That was tricky when I was that age. And now I'm doing my 17 times table or whatever it might be, you know, that's going to have a different thing, but I know how to use that. And then that feeds in brilliantly into that. I'm learning for life because I know I can find a way to make that work for me.

Jez Alborough 00:41:24

Yeah. It's partly to do with confidence, isn't it? I think what you're saying is that if you know, well, I learned that, so what's to stop me learning this? It might be a bit more difficult, but I'm getting better, so I'll be able to learn it. So I think it's confidence is a big thing, isn't it?

Mark Taylor 00:41:39

It, yeah. Really, really good.

Jez Alborough 00:41:40

Yeah. And that's where teachers come in. Because if confidence is, you know, there are times like taking back to the chess, you know, there are times when I'm really progressing and times when you feel like you're stuck. I mean, I think in all learning that happens, you hit a plateau. Right. And you know, you almost have a time where you just say, okay, maybe that's as far as I can go. I don't, I can't progress anymore, you know, and to have a teacher who says, you know, everyone goes through this, you're just on a plateau and try coming from a different angle or slow it down in music or whatever, and the encouragement to say you will get it means a lot. And I think that's a big part of the teacher's job, isn't it?

Mark Taylor 00:42:28

Yeah. And I think all of these parts of the conversation we've just had a really important moving forward because so much of what, what is going to happen, I think with AI and the way learning and the way we're going to be working as a society is going to be integral to having these sorts of thoughts. And conversations and working in that particular way because it's that human creativity in the way that we want to learn is going to sort of really help us as we move forward. So I think it's such an important point.

Jez Alborough 00:42:52

Yeah, yeah.

Mark Taylor 00:42:54

So you mentioned before that resilience, part of the acronym for fire with feedback, inspiration, resilience and empowerment. Is there anything else that strikes you or anything else that you'd like to sort of mention?

Jez Alborough 00:43:08

My. My mind goes towards the word inspiration because without that, you know, I wouldn't have had this career, wouldn't have this house. Yeah, It's. It's magic. Where does it come from? We don't know. It's part of our human lives that's so important. You can't take it for granted. You can nurture it and enjoy it. Yeah. For me, I. I just think as an artist, I mean, I think someone. Someone once said to me, I didn't quite realize, because if you grow up as an artist, you think everybody has. Has that thing of it being inspired and following your creative urge. And somebody pointed out you don't realize that not everybody has that. I mean, they do have it in different areas, but not maybe in, you know, creating physical things. For example. Inspiration. So important. That's the word I would pick.

Mark Taylor 00:44:15

Yeah, I love that. And I also love the. It sort of, sort of ties back to what you said before about. There's no time scale necessarily. It's a little bit like an environment or. Or a garden of. If you just need lots of things in place sometimes for that to happen. And it's not. It might be a light bulb moment in this particular second about something else. What. It might just be that it's a combination of lots of things in a. You're in the right sort of fertile part of your life, the world situation, whatever it happens to be. And.

Jez Alborough 00:44:45

Yeah.

Mark Taylor 00:44:45

And I think relishing in that as a. As a thing in itself, like you say, which is hard to put into words, but certainly you know it, if you've come across it.

Jez Alborough 00:44:54

Can I. Can I tell you about an inspiration I had many years ago which turned into a poem and maybe I could finish by reading. It's just a short poem.

Mark Taylor 00:45:02

Yeah.

Jez Alborough 00:45:02

So. Yeah. So I had a studio in Covent Garden in the late 80s, and I was walking through there one day. It was a Monday morning, it was raining and everyone was looking very Monday morning ish, you know, didn't want to go to work and all of that. And in the middle of all that, there was one woman I turned the corner and she smiled and she smiled at me and she stood out because of that. And I turned the corner and I was near my studio and I suddenly realized that I was smiling too. And I realized that I caught that smile off her. I went straight up to my studio and I wrote this poem which I'll reach you now, which is in this collection. And it's funny how, you know, it was just one moment of inspiration, but the amount of people who have been touched by. By this poem and write to me and I'll just tell you, the odd thing is that people think it's been written by Spike Milligan, which is really weird because it sounds like it could be one of his. But anyway, so it's called a smile. Smiling is infectious. You catch it like the flu. When someone smiled at me today, I started smiling too. I passed around the corner and someone saw my grin. When he smiled, I realized I passed it on to him. I thought about my smile and then I realized its worth. A single smile like mine could travel right around the earth. If you feel a smile begin don't leave it undetected let's start an epidemic quick and get the world infected. So, yeah, one moment of inspiration and here it is all these years later, people still sharing it on the Internet.

Mark Taylor 00:46:54

It's wonderful, it's fantastic. And I think it really sort of epitomizes what we were. What we were talking about, not only in terms of it coming, but also how it made me feel at that particular moment. And the possibility and the endlessness of it is what has happened beautifully it's put together. So thank you so much, Jaz. I've really enjoyed this conversation and I love the fact that we were just able to take everyone on that journey from a creative point. And it's such a fascinating way to sort of see the world. And hopefully people have sort of entered into what it's like to be that creative type of person. So tell people where they can go and find out obviously more about yourself. And also the game as well.

Jez Alborough 00:47:33

Yeah, My website is called Jezalbra.com and the game is available from that website. You'll see a link to it that's probably best to get to it from there. There's three portals. There's one to my music, one to my adult books, one to my. One to this Number Wonders game.

Mark Taylor 00:47:56

Yeah, amazing. Thanks so much for a great conversation and really enjoyed chatting today.

Jez Alborough 00:48:01

Thank you, Mark. I enjoyed it.

Mark Taylor 00:48:04

Education is not the filling of a pail but the lighting of a fire.