On 12 September, product designer Peter Hathaway and illustrator Amelia Johnstone of Run To Draw gave a Lunchtime Talk about their efforts to combine invigorating outdoor exercise with the act of sketching out ideas.

A shared interest in puppetry sparked the beginning of their collaboration. They said that the medium was perfect for bridging 2-dimensionality with 3-dimensionality, high-tech with low-tech and so bridged Amelia and Pete’s own interests and areas of exploration. They began creating stage sets together and putting on multimedia puppet shows as part of a project called P*A*St ( or ‘Post-Apocalyptic Storytelling’).

When Amelia and Peter began running together, they found a positive creative space to talk and solve problems. They have recently discovered that British philosopher and social reformer Jeremy Bentham used to run in circles around his garden to aid his thinking, so Amelia and Peter are not the first to see the cognitive benefits of exercise! Amelia found herself coming up with a lot of ideas for drawings while they were exploring the great outdoors, and the pair had the notion to strap a sketchbook to Peter’s back so that she could jot them down on the go.



Amelia has taken inspiration from a definition of illustration as ‘the theatre of the page where images perform’. Her work has always contained an element of theatre, and her drawings often look like character/costume studies, or are flanked by curtains, placing the drawing within a set. Having seen an old photograph of puppeteers in Krakow, who used to carry portable stage-sets on their backs, they decided to make a kind of sketchbook-theatre for Peter to wear. They called the device ‘Pheidippides’ after the message carrying marathon runner of Ancient Greek legend.

The process of creating Pheidippides was an experimental and iterative one. Amelia and Peter played around with the mechanism, and added and dropped features as they designed each model. They considered how the machine could perhaps prompt or record drawings. Peter began hiding quotes in the scroll of paper that Amelia was drawing on, so that she could respond to them when they were revealed. They designed a phone holder, so that Amelia could share her drawings, or perhaps respond to other peoples’ tweets. They ran the Bristol half marathon with Pheidippides, and every mile, Amelia would draw a new story. They started to become interested in psycho-geography, and how the drawings related to different locations on their journey.

Peter and Amelia took Pheidippedes to Run Run Run, the International Festival of Running held at UCL’s Slade School of Art this summer. The festival encouraged them to think about how the sketchbook could work as an installation, and how the device and the drawings it contains could perform for people.

Run To Draw were set to be our Studio Artists in Residence this autumn, but due to unforeseen circumstances, they cannot complete their residency at this time. They're currently based in Cardiff, so we expect they'll pop over the Severn Bridge to visit us from time to time, and we’ll definitley let you know about any other Studio-related projects they embark on.