Mick Manning
Award winning children’s author and illustrator,
Mick Manning, studied the Foundation in Art &
Design at Bradford College in the late 1970s. Since
1996 he has won countless prizes for his books,
most often produced in collaboration with his wife,
Brita Granström.
“It was 1978 when I arrived at College and my dad
had just died at only 52. While we Keighley kids
played pool in the student bar with Silsden and
Bradford kids, the 1970’s Juke Box was busy evolving
from playing Hawkwind and Hendrix to The Lurkers,
Banshees and the amazing X Ray Specs. Sham 69’s
single If the Kids are United might have been on
Top of the Pops – but it didn’t stop some boot-boys
breaking Eggo’s jaw in two places ‘cos he was a
punk rocker.
It was Dave Rowling, Annie Watson, Ian Taylor
and Chris Broughton at Bradford that first really
pushed me to go out and make BIG drawings -
and to treat drawing with respect. ‘Artists draw,
amateurs sketch’ they would say. We had to do at
least one large A1 drawing a week on top of project
work and it was a great discipline. Dave and Chris
would bang-on in crit’s about making individual,
considered marks that reflected and represented
textures and shapes; they told us to think about
different weights of line; not make bland ‘one size
fits all’ type of marks. What wise words! Not to be
afraid of A1 and white space felt liberating!
Almost as big a revelation was eating my first real
CURRY . . . There was a small curry house just round
the corner and in the first week we went there for
lunch with some of the already ‘initiated’ (respect
to Stephen Manthorp). It wasn’t how you might
think of a curry house now, with piped music, hot
towels and a huge menu. It was like someone’s back
room; with a radio playing out the back some place
and Pakistani men eating, drinking tea and talking in
Urdu. I thought that must be a good sign and it was ‘cos the food was great. We would order Mushroom
Vindaloo and eat it with chapattis for about 50p... it
was an epiphany for me, I’d had only had Vesta boil
in a bag previously!
Another thing I remember about my Foundation
was the wacky afternoon visiting lecture series. The
staff brought in all sorts of people to talk to us. I
carried that education with me when I went to do
a degree in Newcastle and later a post grad’ at the
RCA and much later taught at art schools myself.
More recently I wrote Art School (in part dedicated
to Bradford College) and the wise words and the
rounded education I got at Bradford was reflected
in that book.
My latest book is about my dad. It’s
collection of the stories he told me when I was a lad
about his days as a tail gunner in the RAF in 1944.
It’s called Tail-End Charlie and it’s for my kids and
my brother and sisters kids too - all his grandchildren
who sadly never got to hear his stories.
To write and illustrate books you need ideas,
imagination and a visual language . . . and
Bradford Foundation helped me to find all those
things . . . so here, 30 years later, and long overdue,
is a big thank you.”
Photograph supplied by Mick Manning