BIG on MAEVE and Made by Joel

The main thing separating kids from their grown-ups is a sea of years.  Side by side collaboration between adults and their children can become the meeting point for unprecedented creative voyage. Art becomes open-ended like the sea, and like the sea, you can never predict what will happen; just watch the wind, raise the anchor and sail away. (Jo and Lilly on Made by Joel)

With our ship up and sailing we have enjoyed some wonderful day-trips, firstly as guests on Made by Joel and then in the very lovely pages of MAEVE magazine. We are currently editing the designed pages of BIG and prepped for a huge week that will hopefully end with us handing over the BIG pages to our printer! If you are signed up to receive our newsletter - a sneaky page peek is heading your way.

Meanwhile we are in transition here now that our mothership site has take over the original url of this little blog boat! If there are any blog experts out there please advise if our followers will be able to come with us or if we have to do something more than re-direct our address which is now at blog.bigkidsmagazine.com

While we are excitedly getting our pages in order, have a flick through the amazing MAEVE  and subscribe to BIG Kids Magazine before September 12th to go in the draw to win the original artwork by Madeleine Stamer shown alongside our BIG feature:

We loved working with Joel as featured guests on his wonderful blog, Made by Joel.  Our guest post describes the side by side potential in creating with a child rather than creating for a child. Joel generously helped realise our BIG boats with his gorgeous template design which will feature in our magazine (and you can download it here now!)

Twyla and the BIG Ocean collaborative project as featured on Made by Joel

Joel with his completed templates of our BIG boats drawn by Lilly

Madeleine Stamer and the BIG print

Voyage 

BIG Kids Magazine will include a FREE artist print with every issue sold. Each edition will profile a contemporary artist and feature a print of their original work . Not all children live in major city centers with access to art galleries and museums. By tucking an artist print into each issue of BIG and sending copies out into remote and regional areas we are hoping to inspire children to engage with art that is accessible, immediate and significant.  

We are thrilled to announce that the very lovely and profoundly generous Madeleine Stamer is the first BIG artist to be featured in the launch issue of BIG Kids Magazine.  Madeleine is a freelance illustrator and visual arts teacher from Melbourne, Australia.   You can find more about Madeleine and her truly gorgeous work at Little Circus Design and on her facebook page. All of the images featured here are by Madeleine but you will have to wait until the BIG magazine is released to see the stunning work she has created especially for you! (We LOVE it!) You can pre-order your copy of the First Flight edition or subscribe here.

Half Angel Half Bird

Come ride with me

Mother and Child

The lovers the dreamers and me

 "..find me with a brush in my left hand dipped in black ink with an array of rainbow watercolours". Madeleine Stamer

BIG will be featured in the upcoming edition of MAEVE magazine, along with a BIG giveaway of Madeleine's original work "Blue Dream Flight", created in response to the idea of First Flight. Thank you Madeleine for such a stunning celebration of our BIG launch.

Blue Dream Flight. Madeleine Stamer, 2011

BIG news: see how she flies

The first stage of the BIG Kids Magazine website is up and running! Visit to see the BIG ship fly and be one of the first to pre-order the launch issue and support BIG!

The final post from here.

Another flurry of a BIG night. And maybe our last from this address!
I have spent the last hours between here and Chicago sorting the details with ALSO to get our BIG page ready to fly. Approved by the editorial kids team and a few ring-ins, the new BIG landing pad is very much in line with our First Flight and we hope you love it. Simultaneously, Lilly has successfully wrestled with the 'mail-chimps' to send out our first newsletter announcing our first BIG print artist. The learning curves roll in like waves, but our BIG boat is keeping us above water and there is land ahead, AND an actual magazine in sight. You can sign up for our Newsletter to get all the BIG news here.

We have a revised publication time-line which will see us still make our September launch - JUST. Time has revised a life of its own since when we first began blogging this making-of-a-magazine over 9 months ago, and from Lilly's initial YES to the beginning invitation we have stretched and tricked the minutes.
Now, at the precipice of another beginning, we nod quietly at each other across the country and hold on as BIG fastens our seat belts for another take off.   Before we go we want to say a special thank you to those who have been on the flight from the first, and a huge thanks to all of you who have found us somewhere along the way and are staying for the journey.  xx Jo and Lilly

Jane, UK, birdwatcher and photographer

Lilly's landing on Paper Runway

Lilly has a gorgeous editorial feature in Paper Runway - where passion meets paper. If you love beautiful images and stories about interesting people pushing the bounds of what is possible with paper, then take a moment to read the magazine here, subscribe here or find it on the facebook runway here.


  

Congratulations Maree and Nikki, your second issue is truly divine and we feel very lucky to be working with you.                  

                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                    You can also find originals of Lilly's work at Art2Muse - a Sydney-based gallery run by the awesome Katrina Hampton showcasing some fabulous artists.

  it takes a leap of faith, 

unbridled and wild,                

eyes wide open,                        

to see what is there.

         beneath.

                                                                                                                       

Surrender
Lilly Blue

The pond was everything
Lilly Blue

The ocean of her
Lilly Blue

Unbridled
Lilly Blue

Are you what you wanted to be when you grew up?

It is a funny thing to ask someone 'what do you want to be when you grow up'? At 5, at 10, at 15 at 20 at 40 at 60. Are you what you wanted to be? And how do you navigate when "front keeps changing" (Richard James Allen)

When I tell people I am a dancer, their expression reminds me how so many little girls want to be dancers. So, how do we find our way to where we we want to be when we grow up?  Do parents pave the future boards? What is it that sets you up and trips you onto your course? Are you where you are just because you once said you would?  Did people tell you you were so great at 'this' or 'that' that you continue despite a longing for something else? Or is it a matter of just one foot in front of the other until you arrive where you didn't expect?

An old friend recently updated her world status on facebook by announcing she was going back to uni to study history and literature. She is almost forty with two children. This girl was always a bit of a hero to me- a little older and wiser - we connected over the creation of  early teenage choreography in the Bussleton caravan park, with Michael Jackson the order of the day. Helen was always meant to be a writer. I absolutely knew she would be. But she didn't become one. She did other things. And now she is finally pursuing what (I think) was always meant to be.


As a girl I once said I wanted to be the headmistress (back in the days of Malory Towers, Green Gables and the Naughtiest Girl in school) of the best Performing Arts school in the world.  My mum always wanted to fly a plane-and very recently she did! In the BIG pages we feature interviews with "People who grew up to be who they wanted to be when they grew up". Are you one of those people?
What do you want to be when you grow up? ;)

Mama flying in to Perth from Hong Kong (with a little help from www.flightexperience.com)