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Show transcript
Hello, I'm Janine Walker. I'm a maker, I make things that people ask me to make or I enjoy making. I make parade art, lantern art, I paint, I do community workshops.
Community engagement's a big thing. I do Blackburn Festival of Light. I'm an artist who works with them, so we do community workshops there in lantern making and going to schools and making lanterns for the parade. And then I'm a resident artist at the Old Electric Theatre in Blackpool, so I do prop making and costume making and anything they want, I do workshops there as well.
Sometimes I learn the skill first myself as well. Like I've done paper casting with them. So I learn how to do that myself, and it's, and, and I really like it. And then like I might use it myself in the future and introduce it to them. And we made some nice things, you know, it's just, yeah. It is just sharing techniques and skills that I already have and learning new ones to share as well, it's finding simple ways to help people use materials.
I did 3D design crafts at college and you are always gonna be drawing while you're developing your work and your ideas anyway, aren't you? And I enjoy painting and things, and 3D is just so varied and any materials, isn't it?
I like making funny things. I like making things that will make people smile or just silly things, you know? And there's always, I always try and put a bit of humour into things.
I do, I do regularly do parades, so I do Manchester Day every year. When I do parades and things like that, the stuff is made by people in the community in workshops usually
the lady who was doing the workshop as well, because she, she was like a textile artist. she'd been let down to make these flowers, which the fabric that she'd made with a refugee group that was gonna be covering these flowers.
And I said, Well I could do that cause I make 3D stuff. So I ended up making these flowers, which were then presented to little Amal on Manchester. And it was really, pretty cool thing to be involved with.
I love like, the engineering kind of thing behind, like, making something and you think and like making joints for a puppet. And what will, it's inside look, how will I, how will I carry, how will people carry this and how are you gonna make it strong but light? And how will your lights up inside it? It's just like all these little things that he, I love all that bit.
I suppose it's just having imagination when you see something and like, you think, well, what could I use that for? Like when I go to the scrap shop story, it looks like loads of junk. And boy, how you think that you can use that? I could use it. I could, what could I use? Either I could use it for something in a parade or I could use it for kids to make something out of in a workshop. It's just having some imagination really.
