Blake’s new centre celebrates overlooked illustration art

A bird stretches its wings to fly, drawn with a flash of orange and blue in the familiar scratchy style of Sir Quentin Blake. His minimal black lines are loose, confident and brimming with personality. Few people would fail to instantly recognize them as his illustrations. Blake brought the characters of Roald Dahl to life: Matilda, Willy Wonka and the BFG. His drawings are so renowned that his career has spanned almost 80 years. Now, a new permanent home for the craft he helped define is opening in London. The Quentin Blake Centre for Illustration, housed in a restored 18th-century waterworks in Clerkenwell, is the UK’s only dedicated space for the art of illustration.

A Home for an Overlooked Craft

Another bird appears, green this time, running mischievously. Then another, and another.

This crackle of cockatoos are the mascots for the centre.

Since the creature is known for its curiosity, problem-solving skills and ability to mimic human speech, it seems fitting that it has been chosen to represent the spirit of the discipline. “I have liked birds – to look at and to draw – ever since I was a child,” Blake says. When the venue opens its doors this summer, these joyful creatures will be spotted here and there as “an extra note of colour.”

Blake founded it as a charity — then called House of Illustration — with a group of friends in 2002. It could be described as a grassroots organization: practitioners coming together to address the fact that their craft is unsung in museums, galleries and public art centres. As he explains: “Illustration doesn’t get so much notice because it isn’t fine art; but it’s a language that everyone understands.”

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The project cost £12.5 million in total.

The charity originally occupied a small, rented building in King’s Cross, which limited its ambitions. This new home is the once-derelict New River Head, a restored 18th-century waterworks nearby. Funding came from Blake himself, other philanthropists, and a £3.75 million grant from the National Lottery Heritage Fund.

It will host residencies exploring the social, industrial and environmental change in the area and beyond.

The highlight is Quentin Blake: Performance.

Examining how theatre has shaped his career, with previously unseen works on display. Alongside is Queer as Comics, featuring the country’s first published gay comic strip. A debut solo show by Murugiah, a British/Sri Lankan illustrator, completes the inaugural line-up.

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There is also a free-to-access library, where you can browse hundreds of books and magazines beneath a set of screenprints and linocuts by Sophy Hollington. Outside, designer Sue Amos shaped the garden to be “fluid like water and a little bit wild,” brimming with “opportunities to draw.”

For decades, illustration has lived in the shadow of fine art.

Galleries hang paintings and sculptures; book covers and magazine drawings are often treated as commercial work, not as cultural artifacts worth preserving. That gap is what the institution aims to fill. By giving illustration a permanent home, it forces a recognition that the craft is both an art form and a universal language — one that reaches people who might never set foot in a traditional gallery. Blake’s own career, spanning nearly eight decades, shows how deeply illustration can embed itself in public memory, from Dahl’s characters to his own independent works.

The centre opens at a time when the industry is threatened by the march of AI. Its role celebrating the illustrator as a creative force that cannot be replicated is all the more vital.