(To save to your computer right click and 'save as')

(To save to your computer right click and 'save as')

Each your around 20,000 beautiful humans gather at Cheltenham Racecourse for the August Bank Holiday - its Greenbelt Arts Festival.

A collection of Art, music, discussion, dialogue, debate and creativity.

Why not download and use this free hi-res image to discuss with your friends, colleagues and groups, just how you feel at #gb40?

Which blob do you most feel like at the start of the festival?

Which blob do you end up like at the end of Greenbelt?

Which blob would you like to be at the event?

The Blob team are onsite all weekend, so if you see us, do say hello!

Have a great Greebelt.

 (to save to your computer in full resolution, right click, and choose 'save as'...)

Some ides for use - I am certain you will have your own.

 In a group context.

Hand a copies around or display as a projected image.

Get everyone to say where they are on the Blob Tool - and why?

How do you feel about the Royal Baby-world?

How will this baby's life differ from your baby or a baby you know in your family/community?

Get everyone to share a baby story, their own, in their own family or a neighbours? 

Talk feelings. Stories. Learn from the experiences of others.

In the workplace.

Stick one up near the water cooler/coffee outlet.

Ask everyone to add their name next to a Blob which best describes their feelings about Baby Royal?

It can be fun abut self revelation is always good in terms of relationships.

www.blobtree.com

The Blob Tree and all its' family of Blobs are used all around the world. They get people talking easy!

Now they are available to you to download as an individual tool for a specific purpose, OR you can download a pack to be just what you need to work with your target group.

I get enquiries every day about the Blobs. 

Researchers want them - schools; counsellors; psychologists; support workers with people who are homeless / abused / have had a disabling stroke... and many many more.

You can still ask questions but ALSO you have a catalogue to browse and download just what you want instantly INSTANTLY.

Please give us a view and we welcome  any feedback - questions.

BUILT FOR YOU

Because you are beautiful

Pip Wilson 

"Enlist the power of the Blob"

Here are two new words that could well enter the lexicon... (this year)".

The verb "to blob" and its associated noun "blobster" meaning a convinced user of Blobs in training and education work with adults and young people.

The roots of both are the endlessly adaptable "Blob" people (born of a collaboration between artist Ian Long and group worker and trainer Pip Wilson) and now gathered into a collection of over 50 fresh illustrations designed to promote communication and emotional literacy.

The book begins with the original "BlobTree" that has been doing the rounds of schools and counselling settings for many years and features a population of jelly baby-like figures climbing, hanging and falling from trunk and branches and demonstrating behaviour ranging from mutual support to out-and-out opposition or complete isolation. "This picture is over 25 years old," says Pip Wilson. "It emerged from my youth work in East London with young people unwilling or unable to read and has circulated since among teachers and other professionals often in the shape of photocopies of photocopies. Now we have greatly extended the range of Blob situations and scenarios - though all offer the same multiplicity of interpretation that made the original so useful a tool."

The new illustrations are gathered into four themed sections: places, such as playground and disco settings; issues, including bullying; families and death; occasions, including a Blob Christmas; and, finally, a set of personal development scenarios. "Most of the situations are open to symbolic interpretation," suggests Ian Long. "They can be used to help children and young people make the leap to some highly sophisticated thinking. They have proved an ideal prompt, helping people to open up about themselves in ways that more direct cross-examining often fails to do."

"The great thing about Blob pictures is the way they provide an entirely non-threatening way into young people's thinking," suggests Norwich-based sex and relationship educational development worker Molly Potter. "I have used them in a variety of circumstances and they are great for drawing out views without the need for any reading whatsoever. They have proved extremely useful helping both secondary and primary pupils. In addition, they have worked as a great ice-breaker for the PSHE sessions I lead with primary teachers." Included in The Big Book of Blobs is guidance about the importance of subtle questioning as the key to the successful use of the images. "The quality of the questions that young people are asked makes all the difference," says Ian Long.

"In co-ordination with the images, effective questions can move young people on from everyday communication to discussing their beliefs and feelings, and eventually reaching the kind of openness from which real progress can flow." Ian Long cites a powerful example involving a distraught Year 4 child he witnessed being able to use a Blobbing session to identify the figure in one image he most felt like at the time. "It was the necessary launch pad he needed to express his current emotions," says Ian. "He took the risk of opening himself up and it produced the extraordinary result of another pupil pointing to a friendly Blob embracing another to articulate how he would like to help his classmate."

For Jill Aitkin, assistant head at Canons High School in Harrow, the moment when Blobs proved their worth was in her work with a young boy whose mother was seriously ill. "His worry was being manifested in aggression," she recalls. "Using the Blob Tree picture with him gave him the chance to point to the figure in mid-air having fallen off a branch - this was how he felt and he immediately burst into tears. It enabled him to express his underlying sadness and anxiety." She adds: "Blobs are deceptively simple figures, recognisably human and manifesting an extraordinary range of emotions and relationships. They are a very direct and yet unobtrusive way to help adolescents explore their feelings."

Sarah Davidson of Slough Borough Council's Educational Psychology Service adds: "The Blob Playground and Bullying pages have proved particularly helpful. But intrinsic to all Blobs is their lack of specific identity.

They are sexless, ageless and without racial characteristics. Even the youngest children can come to own the images, finding in them Blobs that reflect their past and present circumstances and how they would like to be in the future."

Jerome Monahan
Times Educational Supplement (20 January 2006)

"One of the most dynamic, flexible and innovative resources the youth work world has ever seen".

There you go, stick that on the back cover because we mean every word.
Pip and Ian’s ‘Blob Tree’ resource has been around for nearly twenty years now, making a great name for itself over that time. An A4 monochrome image, bereft of writing, it displays a large tree filled with sexless, shapeless, ageless ‘blob people’. Like stick men who’ve chomped one Big Mac too many, their simple yet animated forms are used to represent emotions, decisions, personality types and social situations. A person can point to the blob whose stance, expression or activity they most identify with, and perhaps explain why. And that’s it. Essentially, it’s just a tree full of conversation-starting blobs.

But that, of course, is the brilliance of it. Because of its simplicity, the tree becomes the perfect resource when attempting to get people to talk about themselves and their social interactions. Children enjoy the visual focus, and can discuss important issues; adults identify with the emotions presented in these abstract characters. And there’s no language involved, so the image can be used to the same effect anywhere in the world.

Pip and Ian return here with a whole book of variations on the theme, as their army of cartoons populate more than 50 new scenes. Spread throughout four themed categories, they place the blobs in a range of tree-substitutes – a playground, a protest march, a football match, a community and so on – each designed to spark a different kind of conversation and interaction.

Some examples: on looking at the book now (after all, which blob you are today doesn’t always define which blob you’ll be tomorrow), I define myself as the blob at the back of the cinema; and the blob walking through one of the ‘blob doors’. Simple and silly as they seemed at first, these little people have had a profound effect on my thoughts today.

That’s why this book is so vitally important to youth work in the broadest sense. These illustrations, though almost text free, are deceptively complex and engaging. The potential for both getting people to talk and releasing them to think, is awesome.

The acid test: I’ve tried this with young people already, and had stunning conversations off the back of it. If Youthwork ran the resource Oscars, Pip and Ian’s Big Book of Blobs would have just walked away with the award for Best Picture(s).

Martin Saunders 

Editor of  Youthwork (Oct 2005)