The Guy Fox Blog

A History of a Charity in Twenty Objects - #16

2021-12-07T17:59:00.000+00:00

#16. The Bulletin Board of Happy Things (2011)
Whenever entrepreneurs ask us for start-up advice, our immediate response is, “Make yourself a Bulletin Board of Happy Things.”

The Bulletin Board of Happy Things was, of course, Piera’s idea.

After hanging a few bulletin boards in our office, which immediately gave homes to courier logs, calendars, postage rates, project timelines & deliverables, she decided that we also needed one that would be filled with inspiration.

That Piera, she’s a genius.

What goes on the Bulletin Board of Happy Things, you ask?

Quite simply, anything that makes us smile!

Cartoon portraits of our volunteers and supporters.
A coffee loyalty card, filled with stamps.
Letters from children. They’re our favourite, those lovely little notes and drawings, usually written in pencil, but sometimes in a glitter pen. And sometimes with stickers!
An email from a lady in Australia whose 5-year-old loved our Economy Book so much, he took it with him everywhere he went.
A smiley-face doodle from Sam, our UPS driver.
A magnet quoting Winston Churchill, “Never, never, never, never give up.”
A letter from the Governor of the Bank of England.
Newspaper clippings.
A photo of children enjoying resources we designed for Tower Bridge.
A note from Dame Betty Boothroyd.

You get the idea.

Piera installed our Bulletin Board of Happy Things right next to the door. That way, when we arrive each morning, we’re greeted by good things. It’s like watching the sun rise. No matter what happens during the day, we’ve been reminded of what we are fighting for. We start the day with a smile.

When the Bulletin Board of Happy Things gets congested, we remove everything and carefully store it in our Archive Box of Happy Things. Then we fill the board again.

Life in any small enterprise is challenging. It often feels like you’re all alone, pushing a boulder up an endless hill. It can be too easy to focus on the frustrating things – the parcel that’s missing, a difficult conversation with a funder, that upcoming VAT return – so it’s important to celebrate the little victories. In the end, they are the big victories.

Everyone should have a Bulletin Board of Happy Things.

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A History of a Charity in Twenty Objects - #15

2021-12-07T17:55:00.003+00:00

#15. Phone Fax Machine (November 2005)

On a single day in November 2005, we got an office, a phone number and this phone (which is also a fax machine). It was a big day!

It was exciting – and still is – to have a phone number. What’s even more exciting is when people actually call us! A single phone call can change everything. And it often has. In fact, we’ve had a few phonecalls that have changed our trajectory entirely.

One such phone call happened in February 2008. The caller asked to speak to someone in our Corporate Partnership Department. We didn’t actually have a Corporate Partnership Department. Truth be told, we didn’t have ANY departments – just two people in a very, very cold office.

Assuming it was a telemarketer, we asked, “How may I help you?”

The caller, who was Patsy Francis of the Community Affairs Team at UBS, told us she’d seen our work and would like to arrange a meeting to learn more.

A week or so later, Kourtney found herself in a conference room at UBS, drinking coffee and eyeing up a plate of delicious-looking biscuits, as she presented our work to Patsy.

Patsy listened attentively, asked a few questions, and, when Kourtney was finished, invited us to submit a project proposal to the decision-making committee at UBS. If they decided to support it, UBS would become our very first corporate partner!

Well, the decision-making committee at UBS said ‘yes’ (yippee!) and, to paraphrase Casablanca, that was the beginning of a beautiful corporate partnership.

UBS were saying ‘yes’ to a lot more than just a funding proposal. For us, their support would be another big step on our journey to financial independence — as well as an education in working with big corporate funders.

During that first project, ‘How the World REALLY Works: Investment Banking’, we learned A LOT about working with corporate partners: communication, volunteer management, what to expect, what to demand, when to push back, how to manage the needs of a huge company without being overwhelmed – especially when there are 3 of you and 7,000 them – and how to stand shoulder-to-shoulder with your corporate partner so that, together, you can make the greatest impact.

In the first five years of our partnership, we developed five books with UBS, and in 2012, our partnership won a Lord Mayor’s Dragon Award. As the first corporate partner to support our ‘How the World REALLY Works’ book project, it’s no surprise that they are now the first to support our ‘How the World REALLY Works’ video project, which launched in December 2021.

Since that phonecall in February 2008, we have partnered with UBS, Lloyd’s of London, Catlin, Norton Rose Fulbright, Arsenal Football Club, Blackstone Chambers, Olswang LLP, Berkeley Research Group, Royal Sun Alliance, MoreThan, Schroders, Taylor Wessing, The City of London Corporation, Jones Day, Berkeley Research Group and Willis Towers Watson on book projects that have explored lots of different legal, financial and historical topics.

Nearly every one of those partnerships started with… you guessed it, a phone call!

There’s not much use for a phone with a fax machine any more, and we’ve upgraded to a cordless handset (a hand-me-down from one of our volunteers). This machine is now more suitable for a museum than an office, but it certainly has played its part in our story!

As for us, whenever our phone rings, we will always answer it with a sense of possibility.

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A History of a Charity in Twenty Objects - #14

2021-05-06T15:15:00.002+01:00

#14. Coins & Paper Currency
This Guy Fox money is just one example of the resources we design for our workshops. To bring a topic to life, we believe in making it real for the children.

Who’re we kidding? Making these resources is fun, too!

When we get the nod for a new project, we put on our thinking caps and our scarves of imagination. We consider the project topic from all angles, and we ask ourselves, what do we need to do to bring this to life for a 10-year old? Props, activities, costumes, resources… what does this topic demand?

For example, to explore the history of Lloyd’s of London, we turned a classroom in Brick Lane into a 17th century coffee shoppe. Our volunteers dressed as ship owners who needed to insure their cargos; the children became underwriters, deciding which risks to underwrite and then negotiating the premiums.

Our facilitator, in costume as Edward Lloyd, sold coffee and rang a bell when it was time to announce the shipping news.

When the news was good, the young underwriters breathed a sigh of relief, but when their ships were lost, they paid out, reluctantly, to the ship owners. In the week between workshops, the ship captains sent letters as they traveled around the world, which turned our history and financial literacy project into a geography lesson as well.

For our Magna Carta project, we transformed a classroom in Peckham into a medieval castle, complete with stone walls, tapestries, suits of armour and minstrel music. We made quill pencils for the children and we paid them for their work – with Guy Fox money, obviously.

The best – and worst! – part was King John. A regally-robed actor who was fond of stroking his goatee interrupted our workshops to bully the children and demand tax money and tributes.

Having worked hard for that money, the children weren’t keen to hand it over. Far from it.
Their grumblings about ‘fairness’ led to heated discussions about what we could do stop King John. Ultimately, they decided to write down their demands and confront him.

Where better to confront King John than Runnymede?

We took the children to Runnymede.

When they saw King John, riding his papier-mâché horse across the meadow, their anger bubbled over. They chased him down. They cornered him at the pavilion and forced him to put his seal on their list of demands.

King John later admitted, he hadn’t needed to act like he was scared. His fear was genuine.

We’ve turned a classroom into the Houses of Parliaments to learn how laws are passed. We’ve delivered Guy Fox Financial News daily so that children could track the value of their shares. We’ve dressed as airline pilots. We’ve scripted a criminal trial for a Roald Dahl character and have created all the evidence to support the case. We’ve designed investment portfolios, bank statements, and equity trading and underwriting games.

The money is the most interesting resource, though. Sure, it’s cute and it’s well-produced. The coins are real coins – with a nice weight and ‘In Guy Fox We Trust’ embossed on the obverse. But Guy Fox money has no value; you can’t buy anything with it!

We know this; and the children know this, intellectually. And yet, somehow, there’s something about it.

Kourtney keeps a Guy Fox £10 note in her wallet. It was a ‘tip’ from a child in our Asset Management project. He’d invested his money well, had understood risk and reward, and had diversified his investments. As a result, he had just become a millionaire.

A Guy Fox millionaire, but a millionaire nonetheless.

After the workshop, he gave Kourtney that £10 note, saying, “Here, buy yourself lunch. You did a great job today and you deserve it,” and then he winked.

That wink said it all.
It tells us, without a doubt, that the children are doing their part to make it real, too.

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History of a Charity in Twenty Objects - #13

2021-05-06T15:11:00.005+01:00

#13. Policies and Procedures (2000 to Forever)

Okay, we’ll admit it. Policies and procedures may not be edge-of-your-seat stuff. We see you rolling your eyes... in fact, will you please nudge that gentleman in the back? His snoring is waking up all the other readers.

(If you really can’t bear to learn about our policies and procedures, then feel free to skip forward to Object #14, which you might find more entertaining.)

Still here? Fantastic.

The fact is policies and procedures aren’t fun, but they are fundamental. They serve as constitution, rule book, encyclopedia and supervisor. They tell us what we can and can’t do, as well as how we do what we do.

They are as important to us as rivets are to an airplane.

We have a whole raft of policies now, but this wasn’t always the case. We collected them one-by-one, starting with our Child Protection Policy. That’s the biggie, which continues to develop as our work grows, or when new laws are passed.

Policy #2 was a Data Protection Policy, which seems like an anomaly, until you discover that one of our long-standing supporters, Bridget Treacy, is a data protection expert.

Each time we embarked on a new venture, we’d write a policy to support and govern it. Like rings on a tree stump, we can count our growth by the number of policies we have.

Being an educational organisation, we developed an Education Policy.

When we bought a computer, we needed a Computer Use Policy.

When we rented our first office, we wrote a Health & Safety Policy.

With each big step, we made a policy.

We’ve got a Risk Policy, an Equal Opportunities Policy, a Fundraising Policy, an Investment Policy, a robust Business Continuity Plan… and then there’s the Operations Manual. It includes details for every aspect of our work, from trustee induction to where we store the biscuits and tea*.

You may be thinking, “Guy Fox is such a tiny organisation. Do you really need such an extensive collection of policies and procedures?”

It’s precisely because we are a small team that we need it. We don’t have an IT Department who can solve our wi-fi problem. We don’t have an Accounts Team who focuses on collecting past due invoices. We don’t have a Printing Specialist who can fix our printer when it jams.

(But then again, it’s doubtful that anybody could fix our printer when it jams. The printer jams a lot.)

Guy Fox History Project functions with a tiny team – often only one person – who might have to be the IT Department, Accounts Team and Printer Gladiator all before noon. With the support of the Operations Manual, we can do all of those jobs, eat our lunch, and still have time to do our REAL work in the afternoon.

It’s about efficiency, you see. These policies and procedures help us save lots of time, so that we can focus on the creative, fun stuff.

And speaking of fun stuff, we’ll let you mosey along to Object #14. As we said, it’s a lot more entertaining.

*In case you’re wondering, the biscuits and tea are kept in the lower middle cabinet.

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A History of a Charity in Twenty Objects - #12

2021-04-27T17:57:00.006+01:00

#12. Sketchbook & Pencil (2004 to Present)

What you see here isn’t just a sketchbook and pencil. It’s also a promise that goes to the very heart of what we do.

And what do we do, exactly?

Thanks for asking.

Well. By 2004, we had stopped creating publications for children and had started creating publications with children. Initially, the publications varied, as did the topics.

We made a magazine and website about Elephant & Castle; a booklet celebrating Big Ben’s 150th birthday; pamphlets commemorating the 60th anniversary of VE Day; a children’s map of Southwark, as well as maps of Westminster and Waterloo.

Eventually, we gravitated to books. Since 2009, we’ve published books on a variety of topics – mostly financial literacy, the Law and history, but also a cookbook and a fox-opedia called World ABCs.

How we make those books is the fun part: We choose one class of children, usually in Year 4 or Year 5, and, with the help of volunteers, we all explore the topic at hand. Our workshops are challenging. How, for example, do you explain concepts like risk, diversification and equity, or clarify between criminal and civil legal matters? Plus, we – well, actually the children – have the pressure of figuring out how illustrate those concepts for a book!

At the very heart of it all is drawing. We love drawing, not simply as a creative endeavour, but also as a way to see. We teach children how to use a pencil to see the world around them, which develops curiosity, observation and imagination. After all, if you really look at things, you’ll find yourself asking questions about what you see, which leads to deeper engagement, new ideas and active citizenship. Looking closely is itself a creative act.

So we do a lot of looking and drawing during our workshops. And we want to encourage the children to look and draw on their own, too.

Enter our hero: the Guy Fox sketchbook.

It makes its entrance during our first workshop, usually in Scene 3, after we’ve met the children, learned their names and confirmed that they want to take part in the project. While there is room for ad libbing, the sketchbook scene goes something like this:

The Sketchbook Scene:

Kourtney: “This is a sketchbook. It’s got Guy Fox on the cover along with his motto: ‘You can learn ANYTHING you want to.’ I’ve got a sketchbook for every single one of you. It’s all yours and I am challenging you to draw in it every day. Any questions?”

Hands sprout up: “Can I draw in it? Is it all mine? Can I take it home? Can I write stories in it? Put stickers on it? Colour the front cover? Draw on every page?”

Kourtney: “Yes, yes, yeppity, yes. And yes, yes, and absolutely yes! It’s YOUR sketchbook, to use however you want. In fact, when it comes to your sketchbook, no matter what you ask me, my answer is going to be ‘yes’."

Child: “Can I – ?”

Kourtney & other children in unison: “Yes!”

(Here comes the best part.)

Kourtney: “Here’s the best part: This sketchbook comes with a promise. If you fill it up, we’ll give you another one. And if you fill up that one, we’ll give you another one! And so on. What you see here, my friends, is a bottomless sketchbook.”

[End of Scene]

We give each child a sketchbook, and sure enough, in those moments when we are packing up after a workshop, they will stop us to share the drawings they’ve done at home. Some children fill a sketchbook between Workshop 1 and Workshop 2; many fill theirs during the course of the project. We store a few sketchbooks in our project bag, to make sure we can keep our word!

A promise is a promise after all. The Guy Fox sketchbook is bottomless.

And here comes the better than best part: Every so often, we receive a call from a Guy Fox alumnus. “I was in a Guy Fox project a few years ago. You probably don’t remember me (the truth is, we usually do) but can I get another sketchbook?”

We’re confident, dear reader, that you already know our response.

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A History of a Charity in Twenty Objects - #11

2021-04-21T15:42:00.012+01:00

#11. Collection of Guy Fox Mascots (2000 to 2020)

What you'll see here are Guy Fox mascots in all shapes and sizes. Handsome fellow, isn’t he?! Each one has his own story.

Handmade Guy Fox (2000)

Guy Fox started life as an ink drawing, but as early as 2000, we wanted to bring him to life in three dimensions. So, at some point, Kourtney took the tube up to Oxford Circus, where she visited the John Lewis Haberdashery Department and purchased fake fur, stuffing and thread. On a side note, isn’t ‘haberdashery’ the best word ever?!

Now, we can’t tell a lie. Kourtney is no seamstress. She’d never made a stuffed toy in her life; she’d hardly even sewn a button onto a shirt. She didn’t know she needed a pattern. So we will chalk up this effort to the hubris of naiveté.

Over two winter evenings, with lots of trial and error and some very, very questionable sewing techniques, this Guy Fox emerged. We’ll give him points for a result that, even if imperfect, has its charms.

Upon closer inspection, you’ll notice that his paws are odd sizes, the white fur is on the wrong side of his tail, and his nose and eyes, which are made of modeling clay, are stitched precariously to his face. He hasn’t got any whiskers, because his creator couldn’t figure out how to attach them. At some point, Jill Plaisted, our chairman’s mother, knitted him a scarf – a very good addition, as it keeps his head from falling off his body!

He’s threadbare in spots, but Guy Fox is definitely in there. He's one of the oldest artefacts in our history.

Guy Fox Mascot (2002)

In 2002, we met the owner of Costumes with Character at the London International Toy Fair. They make costumes with character (hence the name) for football teams, production companies and charities.

We stopped to chat, thinking it might be useful to have a Guy Fox mascot. Unfortunately, the pricetag was too high, so we thanked the owner for his time. As we turned to leave, he stopped us, “Here, take my card. Send me a letter about your charity and its aims. If we can help you on the price, we will.”

We did and they did. They helped us a lot on the price. A lot. We’re still grateful for that.

We faxed them a few drawings of Guy Fox and waited. Three weeks later, the biggest box we’d ever seen was delivered by a perplexed-looking UPS driver. Kourtney immediately tried on the giant head, which, of course, got stuck.

Then the telephone rang. And if you’ve ever tried to answer the phone with a giant Guy Fox head stuck on your own noggin, you’ll know it’s a difficult thing to do...

But we digress. Back to our story.

It turns out, it’s extremely useful to have a Guy Fox mascot! We send him for photo opportunities – to collect a giant cheque from a fundraiser, or accept an award or promote our activities. He’s our silent spokesperson. A spokesfox, if you will. He has certainly helped generate awareness of our work. After all, a photo of giant fox mascot is the kind of thing that people notice in the newspaper.

Plus, he’s very popular. If you’ve ever been to one of our book launches, you’ll know that Guy Fox makes an appearance at some point – and he usually steals the show.

Crocheted Guy Fox (2013)

In 2013, one of our volunteers, Jayne Mannion, crocheted us this Guy Fox. A wonderful woolly rendition – possibly the most thoughtful gift we’ve ever received. And she obviously knows what she’s doing when it comes to needlework!

Jayne also happens to be a business continuity management expert. In 2016, she helped us develop our business continuity emergency plan. She helped us test it and tweak it, as well as training our team.

So when Covid19 came along, we were prepared. No panicking at all. Whew! Without Jayne's expertise and support, we would not have survived the pandemic.

Guy Fox Junior (2017)

In 2017, when we traveled abroad to deliver projects in Toronto and Washington DC, we wanted to take Guy Fox along. Unfortunately, our giant Guy Fox couldn’t fit in the overhead locker of an airplane. Or anywhere else! So we asked Costumes with Character to create a puppet-sized Guy Fox, who can be dismantled and packed comfortably in a suitcase.

He arrived a few days before we flew out to Washington DC for the launch of ‘How the World REALLY Works: Savings, Investments & Retirement’. We packed him up and took him along. He fit beautifully into his role as ambassador for our organisation and gained lots of attention and questions from people on the street. Every time someone asked us about him, we responded with one of our books. After all, they don't read themselves!

While we were in Washington, we took Guy Fox out for a walk along the National Mall. Quite unexpectedly, we were halted by a police officer. We thought we might be in trouble, but it turned out, she only wanted to take a selfie with him!

He's been a wonderful ambassador – small enough to travel with us to volunteer events and even meetings. He's visited conference rooms in top City firms and has met some extraordinary people. And because he's such a good traveler, he'll be accompanying us on future projects around the world.

You may also have seen him on Youtube, where he teaches drawing lessons.

Lego® Guy Fox (2020)

In 2014, our office manager Piera challenged the team to build a Guy Fox out of Lego® bricks. She was thinking of a fundraiser – to ask members of the public to sponsor each brick and raise money for our work.

We love a challenge and this one sounded fun. We thought we’d better build it first, to figure out how many bricks were required. So we ordered a lot (A WHOLE LOT) of Lego bricks. When the box arrived, it was put under a desk, awaiting a ‘spare moment’ to start constructing.

Spare moment? Ha!

That box stayed under the desk, moved only for dusting, until March 13th, 2020.

If that date rings a bell, it was the moment Covid19 changed our lives forever. When we realised we were going to be spending a LONG time at home, we packed up the Business Continuity Management kit – and Piera plopped the box of Lego on top of it.

Challenge accepted.

60 hours and 3,227 bricks later, this Lego version of Guy Fox was a reality! As our friend Sarah Wilkinson commented, it’s the sort of nuts and genius thing that could only have happened in Lockdown. And of course we made of video of the construction, which you can watch on our Youtube channel.

We’re currently creating a smaller version, with instructions, for our fans who want to build their own Lego® Guy Fox.

Call us sentimental, but we love our random collection of Guy Fox mascots. They are a wonderful embodiment of our ethos, and they bring Guy Fox to life – for our team as well as everyone else.

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A History of a Charity in Twenty Objects - #10

2021-02-23T13:22:00.009+00:00

#10. Rubber Glove (February 2008)

In late 2007, we received a call from St Martin’s Property Corporation, offering Guy Fox a donation of the coins from the fountain at Hay’s Galleria.

Hay’s Galleria is a warehouse building on the south side of the Pool of London. It was built around a wet dock, where ships filled with tea and other exotic foods were offloaded. The stevedores are long gone. The dock is now filled in, and the warehouse has been converted into shops, restaurants and offices; a curved glass atrium provides shelter from the weather.

In the centre of the atrium, there’s a 60-foot kinetic sculpture called ‘The Navigators’. Created by David Kemp, it attracts the curiosity of locals and tourists alike. Every so often, the sculpture springs to life, moving and splashing water in the pool that surrounds it. And sometimes people throw coins into that pool.

St Martin’s was calling to ask us if we would accept those coins, as a donation to our charity.

Never let it be said that Guy Fox turned down a donation – of course we said ‘yes’!

Here’s what St Martin’s suggested: whenever their maintenance team cleaned the fountain, they would ask us to collect the coins. Simple enough.

That was the start of a 7-year relationship. St Martin’s would phone us. We’d hike over to their office to pick up the coins, which would be waiting in huge metal buckets.

Those buckets contained EVERYTHING (and by ‘everything’ we do mean ‘everything’) that had been thrown into the fountain. There were bottlecaps, subway tokens, pebbles, golf tees, rocks – just about everything you might imagine (and many things that you might not).

Some joker kept tossing Swedish fish in there. Ha, ha! That’s hilarious. Throw a fish in a fountain. Ha, ha! (If you don’t know what a Swedish fish is, dear reader, it’s basically a gummy bear in the shape of a fish. Let’s just say, it’s not the nicest thing to encounter after it’s been soaking for five weeks.)

Thus, we needed gloves. Lots and lots of gloves!

And disinfectant.

And tetanus inoculations. (Not joking.)

And other coin-cleaning, coin-separating and coin-counting equipment!

We’d collect the coins in batches and drag them back to our office in bulging wheelie suitcases. Worried at first that some ne’er-do-well might hijack our booty, we quickly surmised, as we pulled our arms out of the sockets, the bags were too heavy for a clean getaway. So if that ne’er-do-well was strong enough to grab 15 kilogrammes of dirty pennies and run off with them, well, that ne’er-do-well could be our guest!

Once we landed in the office, we put the coins through our soaking, cleaning, picking, sorting, counting and depositing procedure. Boy oh boy, we had it down to a fine art.

It took time for us to process each batch, and of course, we had to do our day jobs as well. So we had to take care, as we went about our work, not to plunge a foot into any of the plastic basins filled with dettol and hot water.

The coins were an interesting economic indicator. A batch with lots of foreign coins showed us that London tourism was going strong. Lots of silver coins – 50p, 20p, 10p – were a sign that people were feeling confident and generous. If we got a £1 or £2, we would whistle low and salute the generous soul who’d thrown that one in the fountain. And during the credit crisis, we received an entire batch of 1p and 2p. Tough times.

Every coin was someone’s wish. And every one mattered.

After we cleaned them, we separated the coins into British, Euro and Other. We parceled out the British coins into single denomination bags and took them to the bank.

We tried to choose slow times for our deposits, because it was a time-consuming activity. Each coin bag needed to be weighed, checked and deposited. It could take thirty minutes per deposit, and each batch of coins required multiple trips to the bank. The staff were total champions. While some customers gave us a *look* or tutted while they waited, the staff always treated us well.

As for the non-British coins? Well, our volunteers would take the Euros to European countries on their holidays, where they donated them to charities or churches.

One of our volunteers plinked coins one-by-one through the slot in the collection box at Notre-Dame, which echoed loudly throughout the cathedral, until a slightly-perturbed bishop offered to take the whole bag from her.

And we donated the ‘Other’ coins to British Airways Change for Good (which is now called Flying Start).

You see, every single British coin mattered to us. We knew that the non-British ones would matter to other charities. So we did our best to make sure every single one of those wishes found a good home.

Over the course of 7 years, we deposited enough coins to fund our twice-yearly Family Newsletter.

In 2015, St Martin’s chose a different local charity for the coin donation. We're grateful for their support for such a long time.

We donated our coin equipment to a local church. The leftover gloves were stored on a high shelf until the Covid19 pandemic arrived. That's when we gave them to Sam, our UPS driver, to keep him safe.

And so this glove is a smiley reminder of that chapter of the Guy Fox story.

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A History of a Charity in Twenty Objects - #9

2021-02-23T12:40:00.010+00:00

#9. London Children’s Map (January 2006)

Winning the Guardian Award was an ‘honourtunity’; it was an honour, of course, but also an opportunity. And of course, it was the grease that got us unstuck! No excuses. No more ‘Big If’!

During 2005, we spent a bit of time working ‘under the hood’ on the organisation itself. Lawyers at Winston & Strawn helped us re-form the Guy Fox charity into a non-profit social enterprise.

In November 2005, we moved into a basement office, which had once been a wine cellar. It had no heat; it was furnished with desks and shelves that had been donated by volunteers or that we’d found in the street; it was a cold, damp, dark space – but it was our cold, damp, dark space where we would make our vision a reality.

In between meetings with lawyers and negotiating our lease, Kourtney had completed the London Children’s Map. She showed the proof to buyers at Tate Modern, the Natural History Museum and St Paul’s Cathedral Shop, who all placed orders! In fact, when we sent the map to press, we had secured enough pre-sales to pay for the costs of production. Plus, our print suppliers had agreed to a 90-day credit for payment.

On January 26th, we received a delivery of 5,000 copies of the first edition of the London Children’s Map. Yippee!

The map itself is a folded explorer’s map, printed over two sides. It’s simplified but accurate and features all of London’s landmarks. Designed to fit a child’s arm span, it has an index of attractions and museums, as well as a compass rose. Recent editions of the map include a link to our online activity sheets. It’s packaged in biodegradable cellophane and includes a postcard and a sheet of stickers (eg ‘My Favourite Place’, ‘Went to a Restaurant’) to personalise it.

And best of all, it was (and still is!) real. No longer just an idea! We took a moment on that cold January afternoon to celebrate, and then...

We fulfilled the advance orders, sent maps to our lawyers and supporters, and started cold-calling bookstores, museum shops and libraries to ask if we could send them a sample. Most local shops and museums were supportive, and, order by order, we built up a market.

Getting our maps into Big British Bookstore (whose name has been changed to protect the innocent) was tricky. We’d need to secure a deal with Big British Wholesaler before Big British Bookstore would place an order. And Big Big Wholesaler laughed at us when we called them, saying unless we had an order from Big British Bookstore, they wouldn’t stock our map.

Hmmm... we stuck a pin in that discussion and moved on.

Working pro bono, Julia Knight and her team at freerange PR secured coverage in the media over the Easter holidays. Amazingly enough, people started sending orders through our fledgling website. It was very rudimentary; no credit card, no payment provider, just an online form that included quantity and customer’s address.

We’d pop a map into an envelope with an invoice for £2.95.

Our trustees thought we were crazy – they argued that people would order maps and never pay. But guess what, we fulfilled over 500 map orders that Spring and received every payment except for one!

Our customers, in fact, loved it. Most of the cheques arrived with a letter or note. Some simply said, “A company that trusts its customers – how lovely!” or “Wonderful map, thanks”. Others went into more detail.

One lady sent us a Bartholomew Children’s London Map she’d had as a child in the 1950s. Another customer sent us a water-bloated map, which his 4-year-old had insisted on taking into the bathtub. Apparently, he loved it so much, he wouldn’t go anywhere without it. Naturally, we sent a replacement! And we hung all of the notes and letters on our 'Bulletin Board of Happy Things'.

Other people walked into their local bookstore or Big British Bookstore and placed a special order. This generated hundreds of single-map orders to Big British Wholesaler, who eventually phoned us to ask if they could stock our map.

On the 89th day, after we paid our suppliers, there was still money in our bank account! We’ve kept moving forward ever since. The London Children’s Map, currently in its 31st edition, is still selling.

We used that £5,000 Guardian Award to develop a self-sustainable social enterprise. The London Children’s Map (along with its New York, Paris and Washington DC siblings) has helped fund the overhead costs of our organisation. That means public donations and project funding can go directly into our charity work.

In the end, everybody wins. Guy Fox wins. Children who like maps win. The local community wins. It’s a win-win-win.

That ‘honourtunity’ was also a ‘winvestment’ in something so much bigger than a map.

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A History of a Charity in Twenty Objects - #8

2020-11-05T17:05:00.020+00:00

#8. Guardian Charity Award (2004)

Previously on ‘A History of a Charity in Twenty Objects’…

We were stuck. We won’t rehash it (you can read it for yourself here), but in a nutshell:

We needed £5,000.

We’d tried everything we could think of – applied for grants, developed proposals, submitted pitches, we’d even spent a day at IKEA Croydon with a donation bucket – and we’d come up with nothing. In fact, we were slightly worse off because our train fares to Croydon and the donation bucket had cost more than we’d collected.

Frustrated and dismayed, the Board of Trust called a special meeting to discuss options. Their conclusion: It was time to call it quits.

Ding dangit.

We just couldn’t see our way over, under or through. We were all devastated.

Lori Bean, a good, good friend and smart cookie, took Kourtney to Wagamama; over a steaming bowl of chili chicken ramen, she gave her an attitude adjustment:

“Do you have to pull the plug right now? If the final decision is to close down Guy Fox, so be it, but there’s no pressure to do that immediately. Take some time off, get some perspective. Then, you can make the decision with a clear head.”

As fate would have it, shortly after that, Kourtney had the chance to visit San Francisco. So she packed her London Map drawings and went to America for five weeks. Even if the end was nigh for Guy Fox, she was feeling a bit brighter when it came time to return.

On the flight back to London, British Airways offered her The Guardian newspaper. The long flight gave her ample time to read it cover-to-cover. And in the bottom corner of one page, there was a notice:

GUARDIAN CHARITY AWARDS 2004

Small charities are invited to apply for the Guardian Charity Award, which has been launched to recognise outstanding contributions made to social and community welfare. Each winning charity will receive a cheque for £5,000 and…

[Cue sound effects of screeching brakes]

Wait! Did that say £5,000?!

Yes, yes. £5,000.

Right there, in the newspaper.

The deadline was the next day!

So the application was submitted in a jetlag fog, in between loads of laundry.

We must’ve written something compelling in that application, because it got shortlisted.

And when we got shortlisted, we had the opportunity to submit an essay and other materials. So we put together a packet of materials and an essay about our work.... And guess what?

WE WON!

That’s right, we won. We won a computer and a feature article in The Guardian; and we were invited to a lunch, where they presented us with the award that is pictured above and – best of all – £5,000 with no restrictions.

When the speeches and photos were finished, we thanked the people from The Guardian and Sainsbury’s (who’d sponsored the award). Then we walked out the door, straight across the street to Natwest Bank, where we paid the cheque into our account.

There was no time to waste. We were unstuck; and we were keen to get on with the next chapter of the Guy Fox story.

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London Children's Map

2020-08-23T12:27:00.005+01:00

Guy Fox London Children's Map

First released in January 2006 and updated regularly, this simplified illustrated map of London is the perfect companion as you explore the city – or buy one as a souvenir of your visit. This is an explorer's map. Designed just wide enough to be held comfortably by your favourite young adventurer as he or she decides on the next destination and plots a course.

Features:

Illustrated Map of Central London (over two sides, front and back)
Over 80 London sites and landmarks, with website details
Index, map grid and compass rose
Links to online resources (both fun and educational!)
Stickers (it wouldn't be a Guy Fox map without STICKERS!)

The Guy Fox Children's Map series includes London, New York, Paris and Washington DC.

The London Children's Map is available from your favourite bookseller, or at Amazon.co.uk.

RETURN TO THE GUY FOX WEBSITE HOME PAGE

A History of a Charity in Twenty Objects - #7

2020-07-01T18:48:00.009+01:00

#7. Grant Applications and Rejections (2001 to… well, Infinity & Beyond!)

In 2004, we got stuck.

We'd continued to apply for project grants. There were rejections here and there, which always hurt, but we were mostly successful in securing grants for new projects.

The thing was, project grants could be used SOLELY for project costs. Nothing else. Project costs and that’s it.

If a project required a baby elephant to meet its objectives, then we could purchase a baby elephant*.
But we couldn’t buy a stapler or a rubbish bin or even a ream of paper unless it was approved in the project budget. Don’t even think about paying for overhead costs like office space, utilities or salaries.

(In the interest of full disclosure, funders would provide funding for overhead costs within a project. It was called ‘Full Cost Recovery’. In your application, you could request ‘50% of overhead costs for the duration of the project’ and, if the funder decided that was a fair allocation, then you could pay overhead costs from the project grant.)

We were stuck, though, because we didn’t have staff or an office.

Volunteers were running our organisation from a spare bedroom, using a shoebox as a file cabinet. It was a very fancy, very organised shoebox, but a shoebox nonetheless.

If we’d already had an office or staff, we could’ve included a Total Cost Recovery budget for it, but funders weren’t interested in helping us secure an office, or staff.

So, we were stuck.

We needed core funding.

Some people advised us, just keep doing your fantastic projects and eventually, you’ll get Arts Council core funding. None of these people, sadly, actually worked for the Arts Council.

In fact, the Arts Council was promoting financial sustainability and encouraging organisations in all sectors to figure out a way to fund themselves.

We liked that idea. We’d never thought of ourselves as a ‘worthy’ charity; our work was more likely to make people smile than to tug at their heartstrings. We’d always had this notion that, instead of begging for donations, we might use our creativity to generate income and fund our overhead costs.

As luck would have it, Kourtney had been spending weekends and holidays drawing all of London’s icons and landmarks. Her plan was to design and publish a London Children’s Map and then SELL it commercially.

We just needed £5,000 to pay for printing and packaging costs, and to fund a security deposit for an office space.

So we wrote a funding proposal called ‘The Big If’:

“If we can get £5,000, this will help us start our journey toward sustainability…”

“If we can get £5,000 that is NOT tied to a project, we can invest in our organisation. And within five years, we will be funding ourselves…”

“If we can get £5,000, you will never hear from us again…”

That was the ‘Big If’.

We sent it to a major arts funder.
They sent us a ‘Big No’.

We met with a grants officer at a City trust.
He met our enthusiasm with negativity. According to him, the London Children’s Map would never sell. So that was another ‘No’.

We kept sending ‘The Big If’ to trusts and grant programmes.

Many of them never replied. And that was that.

We’d love to finish this blog with a happy ending, but we can’t. Unfortunately, we have to leave you with the image of us, stuck in our tight spot, and Kourtney working feverishly on the London Children’s Map.

…to be continued!

* Sadly, none of our projects ever required us to purchase a baby elephant, but boy oh boy, that would’ve been something to write home about!

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A History of a Charity in Twenty Objects - #6

2020-07-01T18:37:00.007+01:00

#6. Annual Report (April 2003)

Let’s hear it for listening!

Over the following year, it helped us completely transform our organisation and our work.

We listened to the children in our community, of course, who were telling us that they wanted to be involved in our work. They sent us drawings, poems and essays they’d created – to include in the Guy Fox magazine – as well as letters asking for drawing lessons.

The lightbulb went on in our heads. We needed to shift from creating educational resources FOR children, to creating educational resources WITH children. We needed to work directly with children. We could teach them about a historical topic and let them create a publication that would be distributed to their peers.

To do that, Guy Fox History Project would have to grow a bit!

So we listened to advisors and trustees. As well as funders and would-be funders.

Mostly, we listened to any organisation that was offering free training. We attended some useful sessions:

How to Organise Volunteers – yes, ma’am!

Writing A Child Protection Policy – definitely, sign us up!

Sponsorships for Arts Organisations – why not?!

Evaluating Your Projects – yes, please!

There was one training session that proved crucial. It was run by the Bridge House Trust. While we don’t recall the topic that day, we do recall the chairperson’s welcome remarks – which we’ve subsequently memorialised as the ‘Of Course You Should’ speech.

“Should your charity follow robust financial procedures? – Of course you should!”

“Should you be keeping up-to-date on relevant legislation?” – Of course you should!”

“Should you be prepared for a business interruption?” – Of course you should!”

“Should you be keeping accurate records and evaluating your impact? – Of course you should!”

“Should you have policies for data protection and privacy? – Of course you should!”

Her speech continued. It was a remarkable checklist for best practice and she was pulling no punches. Of course you should.

We were struck – sharing a wide-eyed nod with each other as we sat there – by her assertion that, regardless of size, a charity has no excuse for amateur administration.

“Of course we should” became our mantra as we developed policies and procedures that would underpin our growth. Now, you might argue that policies and procedures are dull; that’s also true of cement and mortar, but in the end, that’s what holds everything else together!

So we listened and, while we listened, we worked. We worked a lot that year! We developed policies and procedure, we applied for grants, we delivered projects and distributed our publications.

We published another ‘History Rocks’ magazine; we produced our History Rocks CD; we secured funding for computers and hardware to use in workshops; most importantly, we delivered two projects where children created the publications: a Guy Fox children’s map of Southwark and a magazine about Southwark’s history.

That year, our income increased by 643%!

Hard to believe (and yes, we have quadruple-checked the maths) but it’s right there, in black & white.

The Guy Fox organisation was starting to become something real.

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A History of a Charity in Twenty Objects - #5

2020-06-02T12:04:00.009+01:00

#5. Guy Fox Baseball Cap (circa 2002)

This tired old baseball cap doesn't look like much – especially after years of wear – but it helped inspire a GREAT BIG LESSON for us…. in listening.

One day in early 2002, Kourtney was at the John Harvard Library, wearing this cap (must’ve been a Bad Hair Day). She glanced up from her research to find a young boy standing by the table.

He asked, "You know about Guy Fox?"

Amazed that HE knew about Guy Fox, she could only manage a tacit nod.

He continued, "We get his magazines at school, but I can't read them ‘cause I have a…uh… I struggle… with my reading."

“Maybe I can do something about that,” she responded.

Satisfied with that, he disappeared.

Hmmm…

That conversation got us thinking: What could we do for children who struggled to read our magazines? How could we make our work more accessible?

Time to do some learning!

We contacted the Royal National Institute for the Blind and the British Dyslexia Association who offered us useful resources and advice on creating accessible materials. We read books; we went on a course. We gave it a lot of thought.

In the end, we decided to produce an audio version of all our magazines. This, of course, meant we had to LEARN how to record, edit and produce an audio version of all our magazines.

We’ve said it once, and we’ll say it again: The learning curve has been steep – and endless!

Ultimately, with the help of an 'Awards for All' Lottery Grant and a small army of volunteers, we created and distributed a ‘History Rocks’ audio CD. It didn’t win any Grammys, that’s for sure, but it was a fun and funny re-imagining of the cartoons in our magazine. And it was the next giant step in our journey – expanding our creative capacity and reaching new audiences.

All of that started with this baseball cap.

Too often in life, we celebrate the notion that great leadership starts with a vision. Struck, like Paul on the road to Damascus, a visionary sees the goal in the distance and then valiantly leads
followers toward it.

We beg to differ. What we’ve learned at Guy Fox is, a vision actually starts – and grows – thanks to BIG EARS. Listening.

That’s how it’s been for us. The more we’ve listened, the more we’ve learned, and the more we’ve grown. The 'History Rocks' CD was our first lesson in listening and we were sure there'd be more. But even we would have never imagined the growth spurt that was about to happen.

Hold onto your hat.

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A History of a Charity in Twenty Objects - #4

2020-03-20T18:50:00.004+00:00

#4. ‘History on the Sly’ Magazines (2000 to 2004)

‘Guy Fox History on the Sly’ was officially launched at the new Tate Modern on Friday 14^thJuly 2000. That sounds impressive, right? A launch event at Tate Modern!

And we s’pose it was. But it didn’t start out that way.

Let’s back up a bit.

Just before the first magazine went to press, Manjeet Edwards of the Peabody Trust called Kourtney and encouraged her to hold an event to celebrate the magazine.

Kourtney looked at her budget – the same one that had not stretched to meet the delivery costs (See Object #3). There was about £35 left, certainly not enough for a party! Food and drinks, maybe, but a venue? No way.

Another ‘hmmmmm…’ moment (there’ve been a lot of those over the years). And then a crazy idea (there’ve also been a lot of those over the years!): What if Tate Modern would allow us to hold a launch event?

The thought bubbles circled:

‘You never know…’ ‘They just might say yes…’ ‘You only get what you ask for...’ ‘The worst they can say is no...’ ‘What’ve you got to lose?’

Kourtney called Tate Modern.

And guess what! They said yes!

(But of course, you already knew that.)

So we launched Guy Fox at Tate Modern, with £23 worth of cookies, fruit juice and fizzy saucer sweets, served on brightly-coloured plastic platters from ‘Mr Pound’.

A few people joined us – some children from a local school and their families, people who’d shown an interest in the project, and representatives from the Peabody Trust and Millennium Commission.

(We didn’t yet know that these lovely people are called ‘stakeholders’. There was a BIG learning curve awaiting us!)

At the event, Kourtney asked for guidance: Could the Peabody Trust or Millennium Commission fund future Guy Fox magazines?

‘No, but you can apply to other funders for small grants,’ Manjeet advised. ‘A word of warning, though, your success rate will be low. Don’t fret if you get a lot of rejections.’

Roger that. Kourtney applied for five small grants from five different funders, thinking she might get one.

She got all five.

So, she got to work! Research, draw, scan, design, proof, print, distribute. Repeat.

The magazines in the photo are the results. Each one features a Guy Fox cartoon, a puzzle page, ‘hysterical history’ facts and a poster with an illustrated history lesson. Each one is a little better, more polished, than its predecessor; each one does a better job of educating and inspiring local children.

And after each one went out, letters would arrive:

‘Dear Guy Fox, can you put my drawing in your next magazine?’
‘Dear Guy Fox, I interviewed my nan about the war. Can you print the interview?’
‘Dear Guy Fox, can you come to my class and teach us how to draw?’

It was becoming obvious that Guy Fox would need to offer more than just a quarterly magazine.

And that the ‘she’ needed to become a ‘we’.

Kourtney recruited two friends, Gina Guarnieri (editor of the London Zoo magazine) and Clare Plaisted (a PR specialist), who donated their time and expertise to the endeavour.

In February 2001, we ('we!') registered The Guy Fox History Project as a charity, with Gina, Clare and Kourtney as its first board of trust. As we produced the Guy Fox magazines shown in the photo, we dared to dream about the many ways that our educational charity might impact children in our local community.

The tiny seed was starting to take root.

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A History of a Charity in Twenty Objects - #3

2020-03-09T18:57:00.002+00:00

#3. Blue Trolley (May 2000)

What you see here is our Transportation Department – our battered, beloved blue trolley.

When Kourtney applied for that grant from the Peabody Trust (Object #2), she included a budget. Having never done a funding budget before, there were bound to be some mistakes.

Indeed, that budget wasn’t even a twig compared to the robust, well-researched budgets that we submit in our funding applications now. It guesstimated the various line items and confidently stated: “I will re-work / re-design the project to accommodate the funding which is made available to me.”

For Distribution Costs, Kourtney guessed ‘£200 to £300’. After all, how much could it cost to send out 5,000 magazines to 65 primary schools? Well. A lot more than you might expect.

(In fact, distribution is one of our most expensive activities. Often, SENDING a Guy Fox book is double the cost of PRINTING one!)

As we said, there were bound to be some mistakes.

You may already know, the application was successful! Yippee!

On 23^rdMarch 2000, the Peabody Trust confirmed £2,000 for the first Guy Fox magazine. On the 24^th, Kourtney dived in – contacting printers, confirming magazine specs, researching local history, drawing illustrations, creating puzzles and designing the magazine. She found a cardboard box maker in Woolwich, who could make 65 delivery boxes, and, when the magazine was ready, she sent it off to press.

The project was progressing beautifully, and then...

[Cue screeching halt sound effect!]

…Kourtney looked into distribution costs.

Sending out 5,000 magazines was going to be A WHOLE LOT MORE than budgeted.

Oof!

Hmmm…
How to turn that lemon into lemonade?
Do the distribution on foot, of course!

A week-long bus pass and this blue trolley cost A WHOLE LOT LESS than budgeted.

So, trolley-load-by-trolley-load, Kourtney delivered magazines to all the primary schools in Southwark.

It turns out, that budgeting mistake was an education (as most mistakes are) and a big inspiration. You see, as Kourtney delivered those magazines, she experienced the community in Southwark – passengers helping her on and off buses, residents giving her directions to local schools, teachers thanking her for the magazine, members of the public asking what, exactly, she was doing – and offering their support for Guy Fox; and, of course, the children receiving their magazines, who loved Guy Fox enough to write letters to him asking when the next issue would be delivered.

That’s when Kourtney realised, this couldn’t end after just one magazine. Whatever Guy Fox was and would become, it needed to keep a-going.

Since then, our blue trolley has been our most trusted piece of equipment.

It’s visited some pretty impressive places – Tate Modern, Tower Bridge, the House of Lords, City Hall, the Supreme Court, Lincoln’s Inn Old Hall, Lloyd’s of London — but none more important than those 65 deliveries in June 2000.

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A History of a Charity in Twenty Objects - #2

2020-02-17T17:56:00.003+00:00

#2. Letter from Peabody Trust (March 23rd, 2000)
With those sample cartoons (Object #1), the rest was easy: Establish a charity, raise some money, recruit volunteers and start doing our work in the local community — and the rest is history!

Right?
Wrong.
Not even close. We took the ‘scenic route’.

In fact, in 1998, Kourtney wasn’t thinking about charity work at all — just work! She put those cartoons in her portfolio and submitted Guy Fox to lots of London children’s publications.

“Nope,” said Kids Time Out.
“No, thank you,” said the Funday Times.
The rejection letters piled up. Kourtney even received a rejection from the New Statesman, which was bizarre because she hadn’t sent them anything! (But that’s another story.)

Finally, there was a ‘Not-Quite-No’, from TwoCan Publications, who didn’t want the Guy Fox cartoons, but who offered Kourtney illustration work on their magazines.

Kourtney settled into a routine as a freelance illustrator — working from home, drawing cartoons and puzzles for Walt Disney and Nickelodeon Magazines, and sending them off to her art director using a newfangled technology called ‘email’.

You might think that working from home, getting paid to draw cartoons would be the perfect gig, but it wasn’t. Sure, sure, it was a short commute and the coffee was first-rate, but Kourtney found it isolating.

Meanwhile, the Guy Fox cartoons gathered dust in a drawer. They’d probably still be there had it not been for a tiny classified ad in Southwark Life magazine that said something like this:

HAVE YOU GOT AN IDEA

THAT COULD BENEFIT

YOUR LOCAL COMMUNITY?

IF SO, YOU CAN GET

A SMALL GRANT

TO MAKE IT A REALITY!

Kourtney thought, “Hmmm. Come to think of it, the only thing that stands between Guy Fox in the drawer and Guy Fox in print is MONEY.”

The ad went on to say that the Millennium Commission was offering small grants for local projects and interested people should contact the Peabody Trust.

So, Kourtney contacted the Peabody Trust.

A lovely lady named Manjeet Edwards helped her fill in the application. They put together letters of support (thank you, Alan J. McLean, Sandi Bain and Grazina McCarthy), along with samples of the Guy Fox cartoons, and on January 14th, Kourtney sent the application to the Millennium Commission.

And then she waited. On 23rd March, this letter confirmed a grant of £2,000 for the publication of the first ‘Guy Fox: History on the Sly’ magazine.

At last, Guy Fox could start his educational mission in earnest.

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A History of a Charity in Twenty Objects - #1

2020-01-19T13:22:00.004+00:00

#1. Drawings of Guy Fox (Autumn 1998)

These pen and ink drawings are the very first iterations of the Guy Fox character. As you can see, he's gained a little weight since then – mostly in his nose! These days, we draw him in pencil, add the black lines with an old-fashioned dip pen and ink, and then scan the drawing so that we can colour it in Photoshop.

But back in 1998, when Kourtney Harper created Guy Fox, she and her husband were relocating from Chapel Hill, North Carolina to London and living out of a suitcase – no computer, no scanner, no software. So when inspiration struck, Kourtney popped in to see Mr Poole at Cornelissen.

Mr Poole was one of those living institutions who can only exist in a place like London. Dressed in pinstriped trousers, waistcoat, pocket watch with fob and immaculately-polished shoes, and wielding a walking stick that doubled as a grappling device, Mr Poole sold pen and ink drawing supplies. Nib holders, nibs, brushes and ink. That was it.

His shop occupied a corner inside Cornelissen and was furnished with massive glass-fronted wooden cabinets that had lots of drawers and cubby holes. It looked more like an old-fashioned pharmacy than an art supply store, and, instead of selecting items yourself, you had to ask Mr Poole for assistance. And you had to make yourself heard, for Mr Poole's ears were not as sharp as his sartorial sense.

If you asked for a #84 nib (which is what Kourtney needed), Mr Poole would lean in and study you closely. Peering, really. His eyebrows seemed to have opinions of their own.

"A number 84 nib?" his eyebrows would query, as he jostled the corresponding drawer. "You must be a cartoonist."

And if you said, "Yes, that's me", boy oh boy, were you in for a treat!

Mr Poole would totter over to the other cabinet (the one with flat, wide drawers) and pull out a stack of paper: scraps, mostly – birthday greetings from Charles M. Schulz, a note of thanks from Ronald Searle, a doodle from Mel Calman – that formed a treasure trove of drawings and messages from illustrators and cartoonists who'd relied on Mr Poole for their supplies. He’d let you take a peek, until his eyebrows decided it was time to settle the bill and send you on your way.

With that kind of pedigree, those #84 nibs were bound to create something wonderful. (For the record, we think they did!)

Guy Fox, as you see him here, took shape that evening.

Please scroll down to view the original hand-inked, never-before-published Guy Fox cartoons.

PS. Lots of people ask: Where did the name 'Guy Fox' come from? Other people assume that a man named Guy Fox is our founder and CEO (which is a whole 'nother story!). Like many things in our organisation, the name originated with a child. When Kourtney's nephew Carson, who was four years old at the time, learned the story of Guy Fawkes and the Gunpowder Plot, his little ears heard 'Guy Fox'. He couldn’t quite understand why a fox would want to kill the king. As they unpicked his confusion, Kourtney thought, “Hmmm, this might make a cute cartoon character, who could teach history to children.”

And in that instant, Guy Fox was born.

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Guy Fox visits the Tower of London. Pen and ink and watercolour, 1998.

Guy Fox visits the National Gallery of Art. Pen and ink and watercolour, 1998.

Guy Fox visits St Paul's Cathedral. Pen and ink and watercolour, 1998.

Guy Fox visits Trafalgar Square. Pen and ink and watercolour, 1998.

Kings & Queens of England (poem)

2011-08-25T21:51:00.000+01:00

Pious Edward the Confessor

Built Westminster Abbey, yes sir.

But he did not, that saintly Ed,

Appoint a King when he was dead.

Harold and Wills both wanted the crown,

So William brought his team to town.

At Hastings, they battled, mob against mob.

William conquered and demanded the job.

Squashing rebels, wielding his power.

The Domesday Book and London's Tower:

William I did all these things

And fathered two of England's kings.

William II, the redheaded one,

Then Henry I, William's other son.

Then Stephen and Matilda, like a boxing bout,

Fought for the crown, 'til Stephen knocked her out.

When Stephen died (such a shame, boo hoo!),

Matilda's son was crowned 'Henry Two'.

He reformed the Law, but Thomas Becket

Opposed the King and tried to wreck it.

The careless words that Henry bade

Caused Thomas Becket to be slayed.

You should hear that tale — it's gory!

But that, my friends, is a different story!

Back to our Kings and Queens for now:

The first Richard, then John with his civil row.

John was smart, but the Barons were smarter;

They forced him to seal Magna Carta.

The title passed down to the next in line.

That's Henry III; he was only nine!

Edward I was the next to reign.

He did some good, but caused some pain.

Edward II got himself killed.

Then Edward III led on the battlefield.

He fought the French in the Hundred Years' War,

While Black Death killed the rich and poor.

Who's next on the throne, you query?

Richard II who was young and very

Cultured but weak. You can guess his fate.

The Lords forced him to abdicate.

Up next: Henrys Four, Five and Six,

Then Edward IV in the regal mix.

Then there's the mystery of Ed Number Five,

Sent to the Tower, not since seen alive.

His Uncle Rick killed him? Maybe!

And crowned himself Richard Number Three!

Remembered as a 'wicked snake',

History gives Richard an unfair shake.

Then came the Tudor queens and kings

Who did all sorts of royal things.

First Henry VII, then Henry Eight,

Whose reign was long and girth was great.

Henry's kids followed their dad.

Edward VI died when just a lad.

When 'Bloody Mary' became the Queen,

She used religion to act very mean.

Protestant people, she sent them to burn.

When Mary died, it was the Catholics' turn.

Elizabeth’s reign was very exciting:

The Spanish armada and Shakespeare's writing.

The Church of England, she founded that.

Then Catholics lost their heads — and their hats.

James I tried to fill her shoes.

He prevented Guy Fawkes from lighting his fuse.

James was blessed with great ability

Which improved England's stability.

Then Charles I, with the things he said,

Made Parliament mad, so he lost his head.

Oliver Cromwell, you know his fate?

He gave England a taste of a King-free state.

When Ollie died, what did Parliament do?

They asked Charles to become King Charles II!

(These were the years, you may have learned,

When the Plague returned, and London burned.)

After Charles, James II, his brother,

Ruled. But one problem after another

Caused a revolt, so James had to go.

And William and Mary ran the show.

Then Queen Anne was the head of state.

Her reign was long. Her weight was great!

Then came the Germans — George the First

Was a mediocre king, but he could've been worse.

George II was the next to rule

And continued the Hanoverian school.

After him, there was George the Third.

He was mad, or so I've heard!

Then the prince became the King:

George IV, an extravagant thing!

When George died, he left no heir,

So his brother was crowned and ruled with no flair.

William IV had good intentions;

His wife Adelaide deserves a mention.

Then Victoria took the throne,

And when Albert died, she ruled Britain alone.

As the head of the British Empire, she

Ruled through the age of industry.

Those Victorians leaped ahead by streets

With their science and engineering feats.

Edward VII followed his mother,

Then George V, and then another

Edward, this time Number Eight.

But he abdicated to marry his mate.

George VI reigned next and when he died,

Around the world, people mourned and cried.

His daughter, Elizabeth, was overseas

In a hotel in the top of the trees.

It has been said, by those at the scene:

'She arrived a princess and departed a Queen.'

She was crowned in 1953
(The first coronation to be shown on TV!).

That's where we end our history,
And look to the future, for who will be...
The Kings & Queens, Kings & Queens, the Kings & Queens of England?

www.guyfox.org.uk

City of London (poem)

2010-11-12T14:06:00.000+00:00

In Year 43, the folks from Rome

Decided to call 'Londinium' home.

They settled on a site on a hill near a river

In a place that’s so cold, it caused them to shiver.

They built loads of roads and a temple or two.

They built and they built, but before they were through,

Queen Boudicca attacked and left thousands dead!

But the Romans survived it, because they all fled.

The Romans built a wall after that episode

To keep out invaders and to protect their gold.

Around Year 400, the Romans left – every single one!

They must’ve missed the Italian sun!

Next into town, the Anglo-Saxons came

And decided ‘Lundenwic’ would be the new name.

In 851, the Danes rowed into town

And burnt the City right to the ground!

Those Vikings attacked, in battle after battle

Which caused London Bridge to shake and to rattle.

Of course, as you know, London Bridge did fall down,

And then 'Lundenburgh' became the name of this town.

Under the Danes, the City grew powerful and rich.

After them came Edward, then in 1066,

William conquered England, but the City kept its power.

That's why he had to build the White Tower!

(The king needed the City to be rich, you see,

But he guarded his power jealously!)

We'll have to skip over a few hundred years,

Or else we won't finish the poem, m'dears!

The 17th century was a chaotic time,

Which probably deserves its very own rhyme!

To give you an idea, here’s a brief overview:

There was religious unrest, and a black plague or two.

England was at war, and the King lost his head,

And then one night, while baking the bread,

In Pudding Lane, a spark ‘came a blaze

Which ignited the City and burned for days.

After the Great Fire of 1666,

There wasn’t much left, just rubble and sticks.

The fire destroyed churches and ‘most every guild.

And afterwards, there was nothing to do but rebuild.

Sir Christopher Wren was given the duty

Of restoring the City to its former beauty.

At the end of that century, in 1694,

The King built the Bank to finance his war.

By the time Victoria ascended the throne.

London had grown and grown and grown.

Workers were living further away,

So they traveled into the City each day.

They walked in on foot, they rode in by horse,

And when trains were invented, they used those, of course!

Traffic was a mess, no matter the hour,

And they needed a bridge that was east of the Tower.

Horace Jones came up with a stunning design,

And eight years later Tower Bridge came on line.

Through fires and wars, the City's survived.

It's endured, it's grown and yes, it has thrived.

The next time you walk around the Square Mile,

You'll see plenty of sights that will make you smile.

To help you remember, here's a quick City guide:

The Bank of England, which has gold inside,

The Old Bailey, which condemns and forgives,

The Mansion House, where the Lord Mayor lives,

The Guildhall and its mythical giants,

The Monument, secretly designed to do science,

And on top of a hill, the most beautiful of all,

Is the splendid Cathedral of St Paul.

And if you look closely, you may just see

The Roman Wall built in AD 70.

THE END

(For Now!)

www.guyfox.org.uk

Tower Bridge (Part 2)

2010-09-12T13:16:00.000+01:00

HOW DID THEY BUILD TOWER BRIDGE (PART TWO)
First, they built the Towers
The steel for the towers was made by William Arrol and Company in Scotland, and it was shipped to London and brought up the river on barges.

There wasn't much space to store equipment and materials, so the steel was brought up the river when it was needed. Crews of workers set about 200 rivets per day – by hand. There are two million rivets in Tower Bridge – so you can do the math.The work took a long time!

Slowly but surely, the steelwork rose from the Thames like a huge black skeleton. Each tower had four steel pillars. The two pillars on the land-side of the tower would support the suspension chains, while the river-side pillars would support the high level walkways.

When the structure was in place, workers built the Walkways.
When the pillars were finished, workers started building the high level walkways. They worked 46 metres above the river, without safety nets!

Boats would pass below them, so workers had to be extra careful not to drop a tool onto someone's head.

The workers on Tower Bridge were paid an outstanding wage of £2 per week! It may not seem like much, but it was twice the wage of a London policeman.

Separate crews worked on cantilevers extending from each tower. A cantilever is a section supported at one end, which can bear its own weight.

When the cantilevers extended far enough toward the middle, a central section linked them together.

Good ole William Arrol & Company in Scotland had tested their steel to make sure it would all fit snugly together once it arrived at Tower Bridge.

Next step: Building the Chains & the Bascules
The workers built an abutment on each land-end of Tower Bridge. An abutment is a structure which anchors suspension chains.

Then the workers built the suspension chains, using scaffolding to support them as they went. When the chains were finished, the workers added rods and girders to keep the chains from swinging in the wind.

The suspension chains of Tower Bridge are really heavy. They weigh one ton per foot!

The Bascules were next!
Remember, these were the "arms" of Tower Bridge which would raise and lower to let the ships pass through. Workers built sections forty feet long, strengthened with long girders and cross-girders.

Then they built the counterbalance. The counterbalance is the part which balances the bascule, kind of like a person on the seat of a seesaw. If you have only one person, the seesaw can't move. The bascule itself had a weight, so it needed a counterbalance in order to go up and down.

On the counterbalance, they constructed a huge gear, which fit into the gear of the steam engine. When the steam engine built up pressure, the gears would turn, opening the bridge for ships! When it released pressure, the bascules lowered.

With its bascules, the suspension chains and the steam engine, Tower Bridge was a triumph of engineering! Its nickname was "the Wonder Bridge."

After 8 years of hard work, Tower Bridge was finally finished and ready for its grand opening.

On 30th June 1894, the Thames River was packed with barges, steamships and ferries. People crowded along the embankments and bridges for a peek at the new bridge. The Prince and Princess of Wales arrived amidst the excitement. The Prince made an official declaration that the bridge was open for traffic; then he pushed a button which raised the bascules for the first time.

Tower Bridge (Part 1)

2010-06-05T18:46:00.003+01:00

HOW DID THEY BUILD TOWER BRIDGE? (PART ONE)
From the bottom up! It's not a joke. When you look at Tower Bridge, you see a magnificent structure, but did you know that more of the bridge is below the water than above the water?

You start with the foundation. And in the case of Tower Bridge, you start deep, deep, deep under the surface of the Thames - 10 metres below the surface of the water, in fact.

On 22nd April 1886, divers started preparing the riverbed for the massive piers. It must have been a scary job - after all, it was 1886. They didn't have scuba gear and safety devices and computer equipment. The divers wore leather suits with metal helmets, and they were connected to the surface by air tubes. They used hand tools and shovels.

Above them, on barges, other workers built caissons. What is a caisson? I'm glad you asked.

A caisson is an open-ended watertight metal box, with sharp edges.

Workers lowered each caisson into the river - down, down, down - until it rested on the riverbed. While the sharp edge of the caisson dug into the riverbed, the workers forced them deep into the soil. They sunk the caissons to 9 metres deep, into watertight London clay. The London clay would support the enormous weight of Tower Bridge!

Twenty-four caissons (12 in each pier) were constructed, and when they were complete, they were filled with concrete. The workers left space within each pier for steel pillars (which would support the towers), and for the bascule machinery.

It took four years to construct the piers!

Four years!

To learn more about HOW they built Tower Bridge, you'll have to read the next blog! But that's all for now.

The Story of Guy Fox History Project

2010-03-23T10:20:00.002+00:00

On 23rd March 2000, Kourtney Harper received a letter from the Peabody Trust, which notified her that her application for a Leaders for London Millennium Grant had been successful.
Woohoo!

You see, Kourtney had had this vision, as far back as 1998, to create a cartoon character who would educate children about London's culture, art and heritage. She had this crazy idea to create an illustrated magazine for local children, and she had an even crazier idea that the magazine would be FREE.

In January 2000, she saw an ad in the newspaper: "Do you have an idea that would benefit your local community?"
("Yes, I do!' she said to herself.)

"Do you require funding to make your idea a reality?"
("Sure. That would be really good.")

The ad said, "Contact the Peabody Trust to discuss your idea."

So Kourtney contacted the Peabody Trust to discuss her idea.

A nice lady named Manjeet Edwards helped her fill in the application. They put together letters of support (thank you, Alan McLean, Sandi Bain and Grazina McCarthy), along with a few samples of Kourtney's cartoons, and they sent the application to the Millennium Commission.

Three months later, a letter dropped through the mail slot. That letter was the official birth of me – Guy Fox!

We launched the first magazine, 'Guy Fox: History on the Sly' in July 2000.

We had a little party at the brand new Tate Modern (which will celebrate its tenth birthday this May). We served cookies and juice and fizzy saucer sweets, on plastic trays that we'd purchased from the 'Mr Pound' store. We gave awards to primary school children who'd drawn pictures for our art competition. We made a speech or two and we unveiled the first magazine. It was a big night.

At the end of the evening, we packed up our belongings onto a trolley and left it in the Turbine Hall. A few museum-goers thought that higgledy-piggledy stack of magazines, plastic cups and leftover juice cartons was a piece of modern art, perhaps an homage to Duchamps' 'Fountain'. They were admiring it even as we loaded it into the taxi. (We still giggle about that now.)

Ten years on, we've grown. We have our own office. We have three staff members and a team of volunteers and contractors who contribute their talents and enthusiasm. We've worked with over 1,200 children in London, developing more than 50 educational resources which have been distributed to over 100,000 children in the UK and beyond.

But some things haven't changed. We still have those plastic trays from Mr Pound. We still do our best to create activities which empower children to explore the world around them. We still laugh every day.

And we are still looking toward the future, trying to improve our work and make a real impact on the lives of the children we work with. After all, there's always more work to be done. But more importantly, there's always more fun to be had!

The Monument

2009-11-21T19:33:00.004+00:00

Smack dab in the centre of the City of London, on Fish Street Hill, you will find one of the world's tallest free-standing stone columns, The Monument. You can visit it any day except Christmas. Just buy yourself a ticket, then hike up 311 steps -- each one EXACTLY six inches high. When you get to the viewing platform, you will see amazing views of the City of London, the Thames River, and beyond.

And the view feels extra impressive, because you've earned it! Hiking up The Monument is not for everybody. It's a long, windy stone staircase, which gets narrower towards the top. There's only one way up and down, so while you are ascending, other tourists are walking DOWN the self-same six-inch steps as you.

Whatever you do, DON'T look down! (You're tempted now, right?)

If you do muster up the courage to look over the handrail, ALL the dizzy way down to the bottom (gulp!), you will see a red-lit chamber underneath the staircase. And THAT's where our story begins!

The Monument was designed by Robert Hooke after the Great Fire of London (1666). Robert Hooke was one of those unsung geniuses of the 17th century; some people call him 'London's Leonardo da Vinci'. We like to say, 'he was unfortunate to be an architect in the age of Wren and a scientist in the age of Newton.'

So, despite his contributions to both architecture and science, Robert Hooke was outshone by Sir Christopher Wren and Sir Isaac Newton. They must've had better PR agents!

In his role as City Surveyor, Robert Hooke designed The Monument. Officially, it was meant to be a monument to the rebuilding of the City of London after the Great Fire.

Unofficially, Robert Hooke (along with Christopher Wren) wanted the Monument to be a giant xenith telescope, which they could use to make astronomical observations. So Robert Hooke built a cellar underneath it, where he would lie and watch the sky at night.

Did it work? Yes. Did it work well? No. Unfortunately, passing traffic (carts and horses, of course, in those days) caused too many vibrations, and idea of the giant xenith telescope was abandoned. Bad news for The Monument, but GREAT news for the tourists who visit London every year and make the hike up the stairs to stare at the view.

If you prefer to WATCH the story, take a peek at our YouTube video, which will give you a tour and a bit of a history lesson.

Before you visit The Monument, be sure to download The Monument Activity Sheet. And if you're a teacher, you will LOVE my FREE Monument Teachers Kit. Both are available from my website, at www.guyfox.org.uk

What is 'Guy Fox' Day?

2009-11-05T15:52:00.017+00:00

The truth be known, it's actually called 'Guy Fawkes' Day. Every year in England, on the fifth of November, people celebrate something which did NOT happen. And my oh my, do they celebrate!

What did NOT happen? A large explosion, that's what. A large explosion on 5th November 1605 at the State Opening of the Houses of Parliament. A large explosion which the plotters had intended to kill the newly-crowned King James I along with other members of the Royal Family and the aristocracy. You see, the plotters wanted England to be a Catholic country. Or at least to be a country which did not persecute Catholics.

(A quick recap of 17th century religious ping pong: Henry VIII had separated from the Roman Catholic Church over his divorce(s) and created a Protestant religion; his heirs, in turn, were Catholic (Mary I) and Protestant (Elizabeth I). Whenever a Catholic was in charge, the Protestants were persecuted; and vice-versa. Not particularly friendly behaviour on either part!)

So when Elizabeth I died, leaving behind no heir, the throne went to James (of Scotland) who was a Protestant; this made Catholics itchy. Of course, most of them did NOT plot to blow up the Houses of Parliament, but that is what Guy Fawkes and his fellow plotters did.

It was known as the Gunpowder Plot. They rented a cellar beneath the Houses of Parliament, which they filled with kegs of gunpowder. You'da thought someone might've been suspicious when that delivery was made, but no. The gunpowder in the cellar idea was actually Plan B. Plan A had been to dig a tunnel under the building and to fill the tunnel with explosives.

On the evening of 26th October 1605, someone (and we will never know who) sent a letter to Lord Monteagle (a Catholic) to warn him to stay away from the Houses of Parliament on 5th November.

He showed the letter to King James I who ordered Sir Thomas Knyvet to search the cellars. And A-ha! They found the gunpowder and Guy Fawkes.

Guy Fawkes was tortured, tried and sentenced to be hanged, drawn and quartered. He and other plotters met their end on 31st January 1606.

Many people believe that Guy Fawkes was set up by fellow plotter Robert Catesby. Catesby, in fact, was the mastermind of the Gunpowder Plot. But it is his name which was given to the date. If you think about it, 'Robert Catesby Day' doesn't quite have the same ring to it.

"Remember, remember, the 5th of November." Every year, people remember the foiling of the Gunpowder Plot by building bonfires and burning Guy Fawkes in effigy. There are also fireworks displays in many parts of the country.

And now you know the story behind my name: I was born on the 5th of November 1998, and, enjoying the pun, my parents named me 'Guy Fox'. That's my story, and I'm sticking to it.

The Story of Tower Bridge

2007-10-10T21:17:00.009+01:00

WHY did they build Tower Bridge?

Let me take you back to 1860. London had a problem: TRAFFIC! (Does that sound familiar?) Thousands of people and carts and horses crossed the River Thames. You could take a boat across the Thames, but that was slow and expensive. You could cross London Bridge for free, but it was really crowded. You could swim across, but that, well, it was wet! And in the winter, pretty COLD!

Obviously, the River Thames needed a new crossing. But the new crossing needed to 1) allow carts and horses and people to cross over it, and 2) allow ships to come into the Pool of London. At the same time!

After all, London was one of the world's busiest ports. The big question of the day was: How do you design a bridge which carts and horses can cross over, while tall ships to sail under it?

All sorts of architects submitted all sorts of designs -- there were TUNNEL designs; there were designs for really tall BRIDGES; or BRIDGES with steep roads; there was a design for a "rolling" bridge; one design had interlocking loops which would keep the traffic flowing above and below the bridge. But none of these ideas seemed practical.

Enter our hero: Horace Jones. He was the 'Architect and Surveyor to the City of London Corporation,' a job dating back to the 15th century. Horace Jones submitted a design for a bascule bridge. His bridge would raise its bascules to let the tall ships pass through. Plus, his design had walkways, high above the ships' masts, where pedestrians could cross as the ships passed underneath. Problem solved!

But that was only the DESIGN of Tower Bridge! Read my other blogs about Tower Bridge to find out the rest of the story!