Hunger's always with me, he never leaves my side
Lisa Stickley explains how illustrating a Marcus Rashford-narrated short film on child poverty helped her navigate the pain of her mother's last days
Last week I mentioned how we all hate being trapped in offices with bosses who stifle collaboration but maybe I should have dwelled longer on why so many of us have no other choice to work long hours at the same desk every day. Or perhaps I can sum it up in one word: money. Because being your own boss in nearly all cases requires financial hardship (especially at the start), uncertainty and fluctuating income. It’s important to remember that going alone can also lead to rejection, psychological problems (particularly imposter syndrome) and feelings of failure. Even though you don’t get this impression from reading interviews from successful creative types in the national newspapers, most people realize that it might be too risky to be a freelancer. (I also think we don’t reward entrepreneurial spirit in this country compared to other places, such as America).
My first stab at freelancing ten years ago wasn’t really a choice as I worked as a sub-editor at a time when gaining a full-time contract was difficult. I got fed up with not being able to gain a mortgage and then took a job at a business website where I was paid an average wage in a substandard working environment where bullying was rife. When my daughter was born I realized that when she was older I wouldn’t feel proud telling her what I did for a living and I knew then that I wanted to write full time. Luckily, my initial financial uncertainty as a freelance writer was subsidised by a payout I got from leaving that toxic job. It now felt really good explaining to my daughter what I did for a profession and she would love telling people that I was a writer (although she may be savvier than me and wants to be a teacher like her mother).
However, showing my now five-year-old daughter the work I do is difficult as she doesn’t read articles about systemic racism (yet). Also the fact that many of her friends have parents who have jobs that are office-based means that explaining to her that you can make a living from creativity can be tricky. Luckily her love of reading has opened her mind to the wealth of possibilities in front of her and one book in particular has really given her a firsthand example of how she can be creative: Handstand by Lisa Stickley. The children’s book she reads most nights was given to her on her birthday personally by the author as she’s friends with Lisa’s daughter (they went to the same child-minder). And, as you’ll discover today, Lisa is even more inspiring to adults as she is to children.
Lisa’s 2020 was particularly difficult. As well as having two lovely kids to look after, her mother was diagnosed with pancreatic cancer in January of that year and died nine months later. She tells me that her mother adhered to Covid rules to the point that she couldn’t even hold her hand when she was in hospital.
“I remember holding her foot,” she says. “When I had to leave her in the hospital. I said to her ‘I can’t hold your hand but I can hold your foot’. I just needed some physical contact. The first time she let me cuddle her was when she started collapsing and I had to catch her.
“We were nursing mum all the time. But it was a long, slow process and you can’t sit by her bedside all the time. You need some downtime because you don’t sleep much so I found some great solace in painting. And, now, I feel really connected to Mum when I paint.”
Work was far from Lisa’s mind during this traumatic time but she did take on one project: animating the short film Hunger Monster, which depicts how a malnourished child is constantly haunted by their hunger. The animation was narrated by Marcus Rashford from a poem written by Purple Ronnie animator Giles Andreae and tied into Aldi’s pledge to donate 10 million meals to families in need.
It’s not only pretty incredible that Lisa found the time for this project but it shows how animation, like other artforms, are fashioned during moments of turmoil and anguish.
“At first,” she says. “I didn’t know Marcus Rashford [would narrate] or what it was. I was just grateful to have a big project to focus on and take my mind off things. I was told it would have to be done in two weeks. And when I found out more about it, I was like ‘oh my god, this is amazing’.
“I felt really honoured to be part of something that’s going to do so much good.”
Lisa lives near me, over in Forest Hill, and is a familiar presence in the area to children. She holds art workshops in the Horniman Museum and has conducted sessions about her books in the local libraries and bookshops. The day we speak I tell her that I dropped my daughter off at an art class and she guesses that it’s Pop Box in Peckham where she holds adult evening art clubs.
What really interests me about her wonderfully varied life is how she started on this journey; Lisa was a printed textile designer, who went to Central Saint Martins and The Royal College of Art, sold about £4,000 of work in her degree show and then founded her own eponymous label making homeware, such as tablecloths and bedding [example below], which led to collaborations with the likes of Burberry and Selfridges. It sounds effortless when stated matter of factly but this CV doesn’t really reveal the graft and sacrifice behind each achievement.
The reality is she worked throughout her degree in Sainsbury’s, sold her creations to shops and even after her MA was employed by Carluccio's as a waitress. At this time she moved back to her parents’ house and somehow managed to build a commercial print studio in their garage for about £300.
“I’m quite Heath Robinson-y,” she says. “I’ll make the best of what’s available.”
My daughter adores Lisa’s Handstand [above] and I’d love for her to read this article when she’s old enough to understand the book’s genesis.
“I had a thought in my head for this book,” she says. “It was the night I found out I was pregnant with my second child. We wanted to start trying again and we were so lucky and so shocked! So I stayed up till 2.30am writing Handstand and my partner went and did some weeding in the garden with a head torch. We were like ‘wow, this is really amazing!’
“When I started at St Martins, my first big pieces of art textiles had some scribbly people in them but I shied away from drawing people until I went to Dulwich Picture Gallery and saw a Saul Steinberg exhibition. I love his style and the way he draws in caricature. There’s one of a lady doing a handstand [pictured below] on a wall and I thought ‘I love doing handstands!’ so I just drew a load of people doing handstands. And that’s what sparked the idea.
“And then it's based roughly on my [eldest] daughter but she looks nothing like that as the handstand character has really curly hair.”
The book appears as a simple counting guide for children but really is a way of showing that perseverance—in this case, handstanding—pays off handsomely, which is mirrored by Lisa’s life. It also is one of the many books my daughter reads that I feel offer a better worldview than the likes of Frozen, something I wrote about for BBC Culture here.
Lisa and I talk about how children’s books have changed recently and that there’s a series called Little People, Big Dreams that feature the lives of inspiring icons, such as Muhammad Ali and Maya Angelou. What’s really helpful is they don’t gloss over the trauma these cultural figures faced and explain how issues, such as racism and sexual abuse, affected their lives. For brown children, like my daughter, they plant a seed of how she may have a different struggle to her peers and gives us a healthy reference point to return to in the future.
“I’m learning so much from the [kids’] books as well,” says Lisa.
White privilege may be easy to digest as an abstract concept but it can be quite offensive when it is indiscriminately aimed at someone and dismisses their unique struggles. It also doesn’t take into account that some white people are anti-racist in their outlook and give back through measures, such as Hunger Monster or charities, that benefit all of society. And in Lisa’s case her childhood wasn’t pleasant at all but she still managed to gain a resilience that means she’s strong enough to pitch work to publishers who can be brutally blunt (and misguided).
“I did have a tricky childhood,” she says. “My parents used to fight a lot. They were quite toxic with each other and it was hard to grow up with. I’ve always hidden myself in my work, it’s always been my escape. It’s a place I go to be me. To be in control of things. Am I resilient? My mother was resilient. She was quite poorly throughout her life and would always get up and carry on.
“I remember Victoria Wood’s biography [Let’s Do It by Jasper Rees] and she mentioned how someone she knew got into a car with her parents when they were hurling toxic abuse at each other. It’s something I’m exploring and find quite difficult to talk about. My dad’s an alcoholic too. Unacknowledged.”
The adversity she’s encountered reminds me of my childhood—particularly the toxic parents and substance abuse parts—and my escape was reading and writing. For Lisa though, written communication didn’t always help her and she found out why when she was at university in 1996 and her flatmate noticed she was struggling with her dissertation.
“I was never particularly good at English at school,” she says. “And I found out I was dyslexic when I was doing my degree. I had really struggled with the writing and what you have to learn at A level—I was way ahead on the practical side of things but if I had to write an essay that wasn’t something I was particularly good at because I couldn’t recall information very well.
“But, what I’m good at is spurting out information that I have in my head, [realizing] ideas and coming up with stories. And what I really enjoy on the writing side is rhyme.”
Lisa’s experience of dyslexia is very different to today where schools test children for the condition more but there can still be an element of stigma around this neurological difference and it’s not helped by academic success remaining largely dependent on exams. Lisa has firsthand experience of this because her eldest daughter is finding certain aspects of the classroom experience challenging and is being tested for dyslexia at the age of seven.
“Her imagination is amazing,” Lisa says. “Her vocabulary is amazing. But she’s struggling to read and to write. There’s so much going on in her brain but she can’t get the words down on paper quickly enough.
“I’m so grateful that they’ve picked up on it [at school] because I know they’re going to support her. But she still has to sit down and do exams.”
Prescriptive learning doesn’t suit all children—it certainly didn’t suit a mind like mine that flits from subject to subject easily and can be bored by dry subject material—but that’s where books like the ones created by Lisa are really important.
Reading a book might be initially a sedentary pursuit but it often can inspire creative play which really brings out the best in children. After reading Handstand my daughter loves recreating the main character’s exploits and Lisa’s children are no different.
“It just sets their imagination off,” says Lisa. “They’re often playing out books and I see snippets of things coming through. It’s always nice when they want to read my books as they do sometimes. We went to the lido the other day and my eldest daughter wanted to do a triple corkscrew like the dog [in Bernard makes A Splash!]”
Young children have had it tough recently and seem to have endless demands when they’re tired or anxious but sometimes all they really need is to be read to. In fact, there’s been a slew of books recently that deal with childhood trauma and there’s one called Ruby’s Worry, which features an unnamed anxiety haunting a child, that has helped my daughter realize that it’s ok to feel sad when other kids say mean-sounding things to her.
Although it can be difficult to get her to sit down to read, when she does she not only enjoys how it fires her imagination, she also loves the connection it gives us. It’s a connection I never had with my parents and I know it won’t last forever as she will eventually read for herself but I feel proud to be laying the foundations for a lifetime of books.
But in the meantime I enjoy every word I read to her knowing that it’s making her love books and be grateful to the creative people who wrote them. You never know one day she may be an author herself (if teaching doesn’t work out).
The headline is from Hunger Monster as read by Marcus Rashford.
Lisa mentioned Heath Robinson. The animator inspired many sayings and phrases but his drawings of elaborate inventions (performing simple functions) are similar to Wallace and Gromit’s. If you want to discover more about this largely forgotten cartoonist then I recommend this feature. Stay safe!