Ailsa Wild: The making of a graphic novel

Session Info:

Ailsa tells the story of the making of the award winning graphic novel, The Invisible War – a research process which took her from the trenches of the Western Front to meeting an epidemiologist in Cambridge, as well as hunting down her own family’s war records and reading the journals of several WWI nurses.

This was a collaborative process where Ailsa worked very closely with scientists, historians and artists, relationships which were personal, funny and included some healthy conflict. Told with well-tailored slides, the making of The Invisible War is compelling listening.

With a workshop: students are led through exercises which explore their own creative process and begin to draft a graphic novel.

The Invisible War was selected as a ‘Notable of 2017’ by the Children’s Book Council of Australia. It has won five literary, educational and book design awards to date, including Most Outstanding Educational Resource at the 2017 Australian Educational Publishing Award.

Topics covered:

The process of making a graphic novel
How people collaborate to create story
Adapting research into narrative form
Interaction of text with images in a graphic novel

On request, this session can be tailored to focus on WW1 history with focus on year nine history essential learning standards

“Ailsa presented a fantastic workshop that both spoke to the curriculum and invited students to explore their own creativity in a way that was revelatory to many. She is an incredibly engaging presenter whose background in performance and circus means that she is able to get the whole group eating out of her hand, and managed to get even the most cynical teenagers excited about participating. Her workshop had a great mix of activities, and students were genuinely interested in learning about her creative process as well as delighted to be invited to move around the space (great for some of our more active kids!) and use music as a creative prompt. Her energy, generosity and authenticity really connected with our secondary students and many spoke to me afterwards about how much they enjoyed her workshop.”

-Nell Day, Teacher Librarian, University High School:

Teaching resources: www.theinvisiblewar.com.au/teaching-resources

Other sessions:

Online session: The process: from inspiration to publication
I’ll welcome everyone into my studio and we’ll begin the session by reading a chapter from one of my books. I’ll tell a story from my own life and talk about how it inspired part of the story (it might be the time I learned to balance another person standing on my head, or when […]
Online session: Collaborative story writing
I’ll welcome everyone into my studio and we’ll begin the session by reading a chapter from one of my books. We will write a story together as a whole group. This is a fun, interactive process where I ask a series of questions structured around developing character, setting and plot. The students will answer questions […]
Remembering the fun of a Story
This session offers a range of fun story-making tools which teach the elements of narrative while inspiring your students’ creativity. A hands-on, interactive workshop using collage and theatre games. Topics covered: Games which lead to laughter and story inspiration Making a collaborative story: reinforcing the key elements of narrative Making and publishing a collage story-book […]
Improvisation, collaboration and the elements of story
This is a raucous, creative session where Ailsa uses theatre, music and messy notes on the white-board to create a story with the entire group. Ailsa will demonstrate how the story-basics of characters, setting, problem and resolution can be a whole lot of fun. Guaranteed absurd story-outcome – for whole school groups. Topics covered: […]
Making and publishing an 8-page book
In this fast-paced, fun workshop, students write, illustrate and publish their own 8-page book using collage. Inspired by Ailsa’s work with Kids’ Own Publishing. Topics Covered: How to fold an origami 8 page book Simple story-structure/non-fiction structures What goes on the front and back covers? Sharing your story: the power of publishing Editing
Little Activist Letter Writing
Do your students want to make change? Something small in their local community or even something dauntingly enormous? This workshop gives students a chance to start changing the world by writing a letter. Ailsa will ask students what issues they think are important and talk about basic letter-writing structures. Then there will be a discussion […]

Ailsa Wild: The making of a graphic novel

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