The MA in children’s book illustration at Anglia Ruskin University (ARU) attracts students from all over the world – many of whom go on to win awards for their work.
New Jersey-born Shelley Jackson is associate professor and course leader for the MA.
Shelley, who moved from Austin, Texas, in February 2018 to take up the position, says: “I think that the MA was probably the first of its kind.
“We know that it was definitely the first in the UK, but it seems like it was the first one worldwide, so it really filled this specific niche.
“There’s now quite a few children’s book illustration courses, but what I think ours does so well is that we give bespoke feedback in almost every session of teaching – there’s not many courses, certainly in the UK, that can say that.
“And because the course has been running since 2001, it’s really developed and been fine-tuned over time.”
Shelley did her MFA (Master of Fine Arts) in illustration in New York City and her background is in graphic design, illustration and writing for children. ARU’s course, she says, has “a different structure than a lot of MA courses”.
Elaborating, she adds: “Most of them will run all three trimesters in one year and then be done, so it’ll just be one-year-long.
“We take the summers off because we really feel like the students need time to digest and reflect.”
Shelley believes that they also do more actual teaching than on a typical MA – “because our industry is so specialised; we want to make sure that our students have all of the tools that they need to excel,” she observes.
That said, Shelley notes that the MA in children’s book illustration still requires a high amount of independent study and that projects are all self-directed, as with other MAs.
“So the taught day might contain lectures, workshops, one-to-one tutorials, or group tutorials, or a combination of things,” she explains.
“We also start our students with observational drawing, and that’s something that doesn’t happen on all illustration courses, but it really gives students a strong foundation for their imaginative work, and I think that sets us apart as well.
“We also have an amazing printmaking programme and we teach our students some of those print techniques, just as part of the regular course.”
ARU offers two illustration BA courses: animation and illustration or just illustration, and then two MA courses – children’s book illustration and illustration for social change, which focuses on the social impact of illustration.
“So it’s not really divided by children and adults, it’s more that that has that specific focus,” says Shelley, who at present is writing a book about children’s book illustration with her colleague Pam Smy, which will use a lot of their students and graduates as examples.
With the course being so popular, is it hard to secure a place on it?
“Prospective students need to send in a portfolio and a personal statement,” says Shelley.
“And we now have two admissions tutors – me and my colleague Pam Smy. We looked at almost 400 applications this past year, and we’ll be narrowing that down to 72 places – so we have two groups of full-time students and one group of part-time students every year.
“Each one of those we try to keep at a maximum of 24 students per group.”
Shelley notes the diversity of students that they have on the course.
“We see all ages, from those just leaving an undergraduate course to those who have already had a family and career and are returning to their first love of art,” she says.
“We have students from countries all over the world, and we sometimes have students that still live at home – the Netherlands, Ireland, Norway, France – and fly over just for the taught days.”
She continues: “We launched an inclusivity bursary four years ago to attract a more diverse student body from around the UK.
“The bursary goes to a new student from a background that is currently underrepresented in children’s books and the children’s book industry, with the hope that one day all children will be able to see their stories represented in the books they read.”
The students come from different professional backgrounds too. “We have quite a few graphic designers,” says Shelley, who admits that being a full-time associate professor and course leader – as well as studying for a PhD herself – means she has little time for her own creative projects (“It’s been quite a while since I’ve illustrated a book…”).
“We’ll have milliners – we’ve had a few of them; so they’re making hats and they decide they want to illustrate children’s books…
“We’ve had quite a few doctors and zoologists, and people that come from different backgrounds, so it’s really more interesting to have a group that have all come from different places and have had different experiences.”
As the Cambridge Independent has often reported, a number of students on the children’s book illustration MA course at ARU have gone on to be recognised for their work at prestigious awards ceremonies.
One of the most recent is Aditi Anand, who graduated in July this year. Aditi won the Emerging Illustrator prize at the V&A Illustration Awards during a ceremony held at the V&A’s famous art and design museum in South Kensington.
Aditi’s success means that students/graduates from the course have now won the last seven V&A Student Illustrator of the Year awards, which this year was widened to Emerging Illustrator of the Year.
Also this year, 2022 graduate Kate Rolfe claimed the Children’s Publishing prize at the AOI’s World Illustration Awards for her book Wiggling Words, while 2019 graduate Kate Winter, who lives in Cambridge and now teaches on one of the illustration courses at ARU, won the £5,000 Klaus Flugge Prize for her picture book The Fossil Hunter.
Previous winners include ARU graduates Eva Eland, Flavia Z Drago, Kate Milner, Joseph Namara Hollis and 2023 winner Mariajo Ilustrajo, meaning that graduates from the university have now won the Klaus Flugge Prize for six out of the last seven years.
Also in 2024, ARU students have won the top three prizes at the Macmillan Prize for Illustration, run by publisher Pan Macmillan, and graduate Chloe Savage won the Waterstones Children’s Book Prize.
So what are Shelley’s plans for the future of this clearly highly rewarding and extremely successful MA course?
“We’re always trying to see what the next thing is,” she replies. “One of the things that we do for our graduates, and this was started by Pam Smy about 10 years ago, is we take student work out to the Bologna Children’s Book Fair [in Italy] and the tutors act as agents for the student work that week.
“We take the work of up to 80 students each year. They’re not required to come but a lot of them do go and they volunteer to work on the stand, and the tutors show the work to publishers and agents who are interested.
“So a lot of the students find work that way, and I think as a course it also gives us a lot of recognition; a lot of aspiring illustrators stumble upon our stand and so that might be another reason that our course is so successful and popular.
“So through that, getting to meet all of the international publishers and agents, we do get to see what they’re looking for.
“It’s almost a little bit of a sneak peak into the industry, and we can see what’s coming next down the pipeline.”
Shelley reveals that she and her team are also working on a proposal to expand the course into an MFA.
“It would mean that we were able to offer an additional 60-credit module so that the students who do work with us, and even some who have graduated already, could come back and do a more advanced professional practice module where they’re working with us, but also with publishers, potentially,” she explains. “We do have some publishers who are interested in this.
“The students could do more professional practice activities, so that’s what I’m really hoping for.”
The next exhibition in Cambridge of children’s book illustration students’ work will be at the Ruskin Gallery in March 2025.
Visit aru.ac.uk/study/ postgraduate/childrens-book-illustration.
Student case study: Elisabet Marreros
Elisabet Marreros, a graphic designer from the Peruvian capital Lima, graduated in the summer from the MA course in children’s book illustration at ARU.
How did she first hear about the course? “I found a book about children’s book illustration in my university library in Peru,” recalls Elisabet – or Eli to her friends – “and it was written by Martin Salisbury, and in his bio in the book it said that he created the MA.
“So I Googled him, I Googled the MA, and that’s how I found out about the course.”
Eli says she found the course “exhausting” but that she “loved it”. She continues: “We were pushed to try methods that we’d never tried before; the tutors would tell us ‘If you are comfortable working in this material, or in watercolour or whatever, then don’t use it, try something else’.
“We would have individual tutorials where they would look at our drawings, and it was lots of advice – every week, every day – and lots of work.
“I loved it, and at the same time I felt that growing so much in such a short period of time really put the pressure on you.”
Eli adds: “We had these amazing opportunities with the course – we went to the Bologna Children’s Book Fair and we also had the graduate show in February.
“A lot of publishers came to see our work, and actually from those two, I was approached by publishers and I had the meetings and showed them my portfolio…
“I’m still in the process of getting a book deal – that hasn’t happened yet, but the interest was there and I feel it’s on me now.”
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