Imagine you were a pencil – what would you look like?  Would you be a well-machined propelling pencil or a large stubby wooden one.  Would you be sharply pointed, angular, well sculpted or well worn, or have notches cut deeply into the wood? 

It doesn’t take much imagination to shut your eyes and imagine the decaying brick walls of the Bargehouse at Oxo Wharf transported to another country such as Afghanistan or Sierra Leone.  To the children there, this would be a luxurious building; at least it has walls, a roof, running water and electricity.  Here, against the crumbling walls there are sharp precise photographic images,“The Secret Life of the Pencil”, a collaboration by industrial designer Alex Hammond and photographer Mike Tinney to highlight the demise of the once ubiquitous pencil, while they are aware that many children in the world do not have the wide choice of educational writing tools, including ipads and the like, that we have in the UK.  They have therefore formed an alliance with the charity “Children in Crisis” which adopts the symbol of a pencil as a “catalyst for creativity and a positive tool to tackle poverty and trauma”, working in countries affected by conflict to give children a safe environment in which to express their hopes, their fears, their dreams and their creativity, for which writing can be a tremendous stimulus to enable children to come out of their shells.

Famous creative individuals – architects, designers, artists, photographer and writers – have been represented as pencils, including Norman Foster, Thomas Heatherwick, James Dyson, Alexander McCall Smith, Zandra Rhodes, William Boyd and Philippe Stark.  Given that many creative writers and designers still use pencils today, this is an imaginative celebration of the creativity that waits to burst out from the lead when a pencil is used, while at the same time supporting a great charity.  Go now!  Find your pencil and a pen-knife, carve it into your own image and then start drawing or writing…..  Be creative!