Mentoring Programme

The submission window for our latest mentoring programme is now closed. Thank you to everyone who submitted their applications.

Who is the programme for?

Our mentoring scheme is designed for emerging illustrators ready to take the final step into a career in children’s picture book illustration. Perhaps you have completed a degree in illustration, or maybe you have a portfolio of work and are looking to polish your craft and build connections in the industry. Our mentoring programme will help you take off as a fully-fledged children’s picture book illustrator.

How does it work?

We typically select five mentees for the programme. As a mentee, you will be matched with an eminent and established illustrator from late winter/early spring to the autumn of that year. It is a similar experience to working closely with an editor for a year, but with the additional opportunity to experiment and work outside your comfort zone, trying new techniques and methods.

For the Picture Hooks team, our aim for this programme is to provide each mentee with plenty of encouragement, opportunities, and support without interfering in the creative process. We take care to pair you with a mentor who we believe will help you learn, grow, and gain confidence as an illustrator. We want our mentees to have fun expanding their craft, exploring their creativity, experimenting, and developing their work.

What does it entail?

The plan is for each pair to meet around six times over the course of the programme. The meetings will start on Zoom, but hopefully you will have the chance to meet in ‘real life’ too. We try our best to match you with a mentor who is within a reasonable travelling distance – taking accessibility needs into account – but you can also choose to catch up online if travelling isn’t an option. Just let us know what works for you!

Each pair will plan to suit their own needs – as a mentee, you can ask your mentor for help and advice with aspects of your work you particularly want to improve upon, and your mentor will provide feedback on what they love about your work and what you may need help with. The Picture Hooks team will also organise zoom meetups and three inspiring, online masterclasses for mentees during the course of the programme. For accessibility, we can ensure the masterclasses are recorded and made available to our mentees to watch in their own time if necessary.

To celebrate and promote the hard work of mentees and mentors, we will arrange an illustration exhibition to open at the end of the programme, which is always a brilliant experience for mentees and mentors alike. We ask mentees and mentors to contribute artwork and label text for this. For mentees, one design illustration of a picture book jacket and one double page spread, both in colour. For mentors, one book jacket. We will cover the costs of framing of your work, and we will also arrange for the exhibition to tour across select arts venues.

The exhibition will be in Edinburgh, where Picture Hooks is based. We will ensure to provide an access statement for the chosen venue in advance of the exhibition.

Showcasing your work

As well as the exhibition, in November we will also set up what we call a publisher’s ‘speed dating’ event in the same venue, where you can each get the chance to meet a wide range of publishing professionals. For this, each mentee is encouraged to prepare/update their illustration portfolio for the occasion. This is completely optional but is a great opportunity to show off your work and get your name out there.

Click here for more details and FAQs.

Meet our previous mentors and mentees

See the illustrators section of our website.

Each year, we collect feedback from our participants in order to improve upon the scheme. Below you can find some closing comments from past mentees.

“Jill offered invaluable feedback at every stage of the process, continuously challenging me to step beyond my comfort zone. It is clear to me how my illustrations have improved during this process, and I could not be more thankful for the mentorship Jill has provided.”
– Aline Monda, mentee 2023

“Being a mentee has been a brilliant experience, a rare chance to hone my storytelling skills and have a deeper understanding of character-led picture books.”
– Olu Oke, mentee 2023

No illustration experience but interested to give it a go? Check out our Buddy Scheme for creative artists.