By TastEd founder, Bee Wilson

Many children have a feeling that vegetables and fruits are something alien and not for them. They have been told many times that these foods are healthy. But knowing that something is healthy and wanting to eat it are two very different things.

The heart of TastEd is giving children a sense that vegetables and fruits are not just something they should eat because they are healthy but something they can learn to crave because they are exciting, colourful, strange, varied, beautiful and delicious. We want to help children make vegetables part of their world; foods to reach out and touch.

We knew from the beginning that one of the most powerful ways to communicate all of this to children would be through art. And we were incredibly fortunate in that from the earliest days of TastEd in 2019, we have worked with one of the most talented illustrators in the business – Annabel Lee (someone who has also done the illustrations for some of my books).

The ultimate sign of how engaged children are by Annabel’s art is that they often try to copy her pictures at the end of a TastEd lesson. As well as creating our carrot logo, Annabel produced all of the illustrations that go into our lesson plans, PowerPoints and other teaching resources as well as on our website.

This has been a busy year for Annabel. Aside from her TastEd work, some of her other recent projects include work for The Cambridge Botanic Gardens. She created a Plant Timeline which took over a year to make and was made with a community group. It’s on permanent display in the gardens and measures over 10 metres long. She also recently created some concept art for the film industry at Pinewood studios working on the new Greta Gerwig Narnia film! The whole TastEd team feels extremely proud of her.

A couple of weeks ago, I caught up with Annabel at her kitchen table to talk about her art for TastEd.

Bee: Tell me a bit more about your art experience before you started working with TastEd.

Annabel: In the 1990s, I was a theatre designer and I had experience as an art director working for various London theatre companies plus MTV.

When I was a theatre designer I founded and co-ran EPOC English Pocket Opera Company. At its height we worked with 50 000 school children a year. EPOC was an educational opera company that brought professional singers into schools and gave children hands-on experience with opera.

As part of EPOC, I devised and delivered art workshops in schools and they would be integrated into the professional productions. The children created masks that would used on stage.

Bee: What about TastEd appealed to you as an artist?

Fruits and vegetables are just a brilliant subject! It’s a thing that people have wondered over since ancient times: how to depict fruit and vegetables in a way that preserves their character. To get that translucency and texture and all of that sort of thing. They are easy for me to paint because they just are brilliant things.

Bee: What are some of the trickiest things to depict?

Annabel: I love all the different challenges. When you came in with a request for beans I thought how would I do that? I always paint them in watercolours it lends itself so well to it because of that translucency and freshness and juiciness. The colours are juicy. The watercolours I use are concentrated, which helps.

Bee: One of the starting points for TastEd was that we realised many children simply did not know many vegetables or were even disgusted by them. How did that affect your approach?

Annabel: I wanted to make the vegetables as joyous as possible. I wanted them to be resplendent! My art is always trying to give them the texture of the produce. Sometimes I will redo a certain ingredient to make it crunchier or shinier.

Bee: I sometimes think your art gives children the courage to get closer to the vegetables. If it’s a hand-painted piece of food maybe it reminds them of picture books?

Annabel: Yes! When the children do pictures in TastEd lessons I’ve been shown that they often copy my drawing. You learn a lot through copying other artists in art and that reinforces the lessons in TastEd.

If they are noticing and trying to find the right red for drawing a tomato or the right beetrooty colour, that’s one of the tenets of TastEd which is sight. It’s very important that there’s a mixture of drawings and photographs in TastEd lessons. It could be more boring if it was all photographed. Photos do a different job and drawings do a different job and there is room for it all.

When children can see somebody else’s depiction of a certain fruit or vegetable, it may be a bit wonky and that is encouraging for them in their own art. They feel they too can be splashy and juicy or crumbly in their art – they don’t have to be neat.

Bee: How does it make you feel when children copy your TastEd art?

Annabel: I love it! And the children’s pictures are better than mine, usually!

[I show Annabel some of the recent children’s pictures of beans from our beans pilots and she reacts with huge enthusiasm].

Bee: Can you talk more about some particular favourite projects you‘ve done for TastEd

Annabel:  I really enjoyed collaborating with you and Science Teacher Zack Szreter on the Plant Science ones because some of the art was more elaborate and I had the chance to explore vegetables growing, such as carrots growing in the ground.

Bee: Can you tell me about some challenges?

Annabel:

The logo was a challenge.

I got hung up on the idea of the green leaves of the carrot going ‘whoosh!’ to make it go faster. I wanted it to look cartoony but also delicious. We realised that a carrot could be like an arrow, like a car. It’s a very dynamic shape. The carrot lent itself for the bunting for TastEd’s fifth birthday party.

The cursive style of the writing was also important. It needed to be accessible for British classrooms but also to look handwritten and genuine. The logo went through so many versions before I got the right one.

Bee: Tell about redoing the sense icons. When we started, the original sense icons were done in bright colours with no relation to human skin. Then trustees decided to recommission the icons in more realistic skin colours (all credit to Jane Lockie for suggesting this and to you for doing it so brilliantly).

Annabel: The new sense icons took me ages to do. It was some of the hardest art I’ve done for TastEd. It makes me proud to know that lots of different children from different ethnicities and backgrounds can see themselves in the images and know that hands and noses and eyes come in many different colours and that this is something to be celebrated.

Bee: Finally, tell me anything else you enjoy about creating art for TastEd?

Annabel: I enjoy the collaboration. It keeps my creativity going! I also love the rigour because the produce has to be accurate enough to use in a classroom.  And there is also so much humour, which makes it fun. I enjoyed creating the ‘carrot tree’ and peppers ground in the ground to help children address the question of ‘where food comes from’ (something they are supposed to learn as part of the national curriculum).  The carrot tree was a great idea because it helped children who weren’t quite sure about where carrots did grow to laugh about it and feel included.

See more of Annabel Lee’s work on her website.