Five things you will learn when you host a workshop as an artist.

Last week, I co-hosted an art and music workshop with my friend, the talented musician Eloise Garland at the PACE Centre in Buckinghamshire. This education charity provides specialist support and therapy for children with motor disorders.

To coincide with the fifty year anniversary of the space race, the theme for the workshop was about space and the planets.

The five things I learnt as an artist at the workshop are as follows:

1. You should be able to quickly create a picture of a spaceman in outer space from the start/finish of the David Bowie song, ‘Space Oddity’ playing in the background.

2. Your presentation skills must be up to scratch when you talk about the subjects in your picture.

3. When you talk to your audience, make sure you are making eye contact with them, so there is engagement.

4. Make the best of your art materials handed to you. I was handed egg tempura paint, which I haven’t used in many years, but it does create bright colours.

5. Engage with all children at the workshop. Encourage them to add some glitter to their painting to add a bit of space magic.

The charismatic violinist is Eloise Garland, who took these of me in action...and to whom I am very grateful.

We have had a lot of fun together, which is what a good workshop is about.