About

Small Fry Collective is a creative hub founded in 2018 by Maisy Summer, hosting a range of creative events, projects, workshops and talks in person and online, bringing together creatives from across the globe to share and exchange insights, knowledge and encouragement. Events hosted by Maisy Summer and Sarah Wilson.

Who is Small Fry?

Since graduating together from Manchester School of Art both Maisy & Sarah have been working across Illustration, Design, Animation & Education in different capacities and bring to the table a range of knowledge from different areas of the creative industry.

  • Founder of Small Fry Maisy Summer, is an award-winning Illustrator and Animator working closely with clients big and small to help them communicate their stories personally and thoughtfully often with community, people, heritage and culture at the centre. Maisy has worked widely within branding, publishing, animation, and editorial, as well as creating large-scale murals and designing wallpaper. Clients include: Google Arts & Culture, Bookshop Day, Hachette, Build Hollywood, Whitworth Art Gallery, Bury Art Museum, Hat Museum Hatworks, Kings College London, Sunday Times, EDIT Brand, Isle of Man Post Office, Paperchase

    With a playful approach to her practice, Maisy creates layers of delightful textures, bold colour combinations and joyful compositions. Within Maisy’s toolkit is a mix of techniques and materials which she adapts to each project. This can be handcrafted techniques such as paper cutting and drawing with scissors, bold mark-making with pastels, paints and pencils, to carefully intertwining digital drawing programs such as Adobe Fresco. All of which Maisy is more than happy to document the process to enrich client projects, workshops, to playful branded personal projects such as ‘Drawing Diaries’. Maisy's projects have been shortlisted in the AOI World Illustration Awards & STACK Magazine Awards, as well as received features in It’s Nice That, Creative Boom & Creative Review. Alongside freelancing Maisy guest lectures (FHEA) across the UK.

  • Sarah Wilson is an illustrator and animator who has experience working with a range of clients to produce work for brands, articles and adverts. Her main focus is her brand, Little Black Cat Illustrated Goods, where she designs luxury paper products from her studio in Manchester. Little Black Cat is stocked in over 100 independent businesses and retailers across the globe. Sarah’s work is playful and bold, depicting character-led imagery with a contemporary folkloric twist. Sarah joined Small Fry in 2021, after re-connecting with fellow MMU alumni Maisy and bonding over a shared love of silly drawing prompts. Sarah still works on commercial projects alongside running her brand and co-hosting workshops alongside Maisy, she has been a Derwent Artist Ambassador since 2021.

    Clients include: Ohh Deer, Not-Another-Bill, Derwent, The AOI, UAL: Camberwell, University of Lancaster, University of Manchester, The Bowes Museum, Mollie Makes, Maisonette World.

  • Small Fry aims to champion creativity and bring together a range of creatives spanning from those wanting to try out something new, students, to professional designers and illustrators working in the industry whether at the start of their journey or 10 years in to exchange knowledge, insights, encouragement and experiences through welcoming events, talks, projects and workshops.

  • Small Fry hosts its own branded workshops and talk series such as Small Fry's Building Blocks of Freelance Illustration, About Page Workshop, Portfolio Reviews and their renowned Small Fry Chats series and workshops you can watch back live sessions you’ve missed here (this is new part of Small Fry we’re slowly adding too). You can see all our previous workshops on our event archives to get a feel for what we do + reoccurring workshops and talks. We’ve hosted personal intimate workshops of 5 all the way up to 200+ attendee talks.

    Speakers we’ve worked with: Raissa Pardini, Fran Meneses, Jacky Winter, Dan Woodger, Caroline Dowsett, Jane Bowyer, Stephen Fowler, Ian Morris, Scribble Inc, Nicola Mullen, Lucia Vinti, Isobel Platt, Molly Fairhurst, Hannah Valentine, Lucy Grimes, Katie Jones, 2B, Bee Grandinetti, Yuk Fun, Nicholas Stevenson, Wendy Wong, Thomas Harnett O’mera, Derek Brazell, Nicola Fernandes.

    Themes of talks + workshops include: Small Fry’s Building Blocks of Freelance Illustration, Mixed Media Illustration and Photoshop Course, Navigating Change, Playful Type, “Springing back” post-pandemic, 6-Week Beginners Illustration course, Fashion Illustration, Children’s Books, Designer Illustrators, What is your brand story, Illustrating Figures, About Page Workshop, Food Illustration, Creating a product, Virtual Museum Walk, Animation for beginners, Designer Illustrators.

    PS. You can watch a few talks here for free. You’re welcome!

  • Indeedy! Small Fry also works with brands in a variety of ways such as

    • Hosting the AOI Manchester meet-up group from 2020-2023.

    • 50+ workshop series collaboration with Elephant Academy and their creative partner Winsor and Newton, with sessions both designed by Small Fry and hosted by other Illustrators and animators under the umbrella of Small Fry.

    • Brand collaboration with Derwent, hosting a workshop centred around their latest product Chromaflow pencils.

    • Personalised creative workshops and business led talks with universities such as Norwich University, University of Manchester, & Cardiff University with students BA to MA level on creative and non-creative courses on themes such as; Illustration for beginners, Being a Freelance Illustrator and drawing prompt workshops personalised to university town.

    • British Council funded project with Pustaka Pias bringing together illustrators across Indonesia and the UK.

    • Creating illustrative branded presentations for workshops for clients such as ‘What is your Brand Story?’

    • GF-Smith supplied lovely paper stock at our Rubber Stamping event with Stephen Fowler + gave an intro talk into what they do as a brand.

    • Curating a Print collection with Elephant Art with friends of Small Fry.

    Are you a brand with a creative project or brief in mind for Small Fry? Do have a story, product or service you think could connect with our audience through a talk or workshop? Are you a brand or university that would like to look into having Small Fry deliver a workshop or talk?

    Get in touch | hello@smallfrycollective.com

  • GF-Smith, Derwent, Elephant Academy, AOI (Association of Illustrators), The British Council, University of Manchester, Mind Charity, Cardiff University, Norwich University, Winsor & Newton, The Pankhurst Centre, Women in Print, and Manchester School of Art.​​​​​​​

  • We saw ‘Small Fry’ written on a fry-up menu, and loved the connotations it had. Just on the brink of leaving university, it felt like we were small fish in a BIG BIG pond. How and where do you start?

    Initially, Small Fry began as a way to network and keep in contact with our peers through hosting creative events, and over time it’s grown with us and become more of an educational tool for both our audience and us, a community of like-minded people trying to navigate the creative industries.

  • The Seasoning of Small Fry | Now Then Manchester

    Small Fry founder Maisy Summer on how the collective empowers emerging creatives | Creative Boom

    Art in Motion: Learn to Animate with Our Brand New Online Course | Elephant Magazine

    Weirdo Small Fry Profile | Weirdo

Testimonials

Testimonials

“This was a really comprehensive workshop with lots of great tips on every aspect of being a freelance illustrator. Sarah and Maisy were both lovely and talked about their own journeys with great honesty and generosity. I left with lots of great resources and the motivation to take the next steps in my freelancing career. I would highly recommend this workshop, whether you are at the start of your illustration journey or already have some experience but are feeling stuck and need some guidance!”

Céline Moya | Participant on Small Fry's Building Blocks of Freelance Illustration

“Eighteen pages of notes. Thanks for being so thorough. It was a great talk!”

“Struggles for artists at any level were mitigated by the unending repertoire of fun activities and light-hearted anecdotes offered by both teachers. Thank you for the inspiration, every single week”

Colleen Doherty | Participant on 6-Week Illustration Course

“Very informative but easy to follow along and I loved seeing both your work - just lovely!”

“It was such an enjoyable evening, and perhaps the most natural, warm, relaxed atmosphere I’ve had on any Zoom call during the pandemic, it almost felt like we were down the pub! The stories and drawings people shared made my day and remind me of what is so special about the illustration community”

Dan Woodger | Small Fry Chats Speaker

“I especially found your organisation tips useful and I’d like to implement a lot of them myself”

“I can't tell you how much I loved the whole course. I had been feeling stuck - I've been drawing a LOT this year, but all from photo references, and I felt like I didn't know how to make anything that was my own creation.

Your course was the perfect thing to give me direction, I think of it as kind of a "levelling up" course - how to get from being decent at drawing to actually start making art. These last couple of weeks I have found so much motivation to create, so I'm so grateful! It's definitely one of the best courses I've ever taken.”

Lauren Jayne Hall | 6-Week Illustration Course

"This workshop answered all the mysteries about how to get started as a freelance illustrator. Like, what do illustrators do all day? (a lot of admin and reaching out to potential clients, with some drawing on the side ;)"

“This course was so fun, challenging and inspiring! I looked forward to it each week. I loved learning about the different areas of illustration and I was inspired by all the examples Maisy and Sarah shared.

The exercises and tasks pushed me to try out drawing things I never would have on my own, like maps, and to use techniques like collage in a new way. I learned a lot, but best of all I left each class feeling excited to do more illustration!”

Melissa Lakey 6-Week Illustration Course

Take a look 👀!

Rubber Stamping with Stephen Fowler and GF-Smith

Springing Forward with Jane Bowyer from Studio Called Jane