Dear visitor,

Welcome. I am Kieran Poole, the artist behind Rubbish Idea and The Shopping List Guy.

I hate litter.

For as long as I can remember, wherever I have gone, I have picked it up.

But in 2022, I decided to do more than that and began keeping hold of any plastic bottle lids and can ring-pulls.

Why? I was honestly not sure at the time. All I had was the Rubbish Idea of making something with them.

It hit me when, playing on my outdoor pool table (an indoor one would have meant not having a bed), a friend challenged me to see how long it would take to find enough litter to fill the table. Confident I could do it with lids alone, I reckoned a year’s worth of litter picking would do the trick.

Deary dumplings, was I wrong!

Because, just one month later, the table was covered with 1,603 lids producing a mosaic myriad of colour.

So what happened next? Did I pop them all in a recycling bag for bin day?

Nope. Instead, I had a helluva truly Rubbish Idea.

My first effort was a litter version of Mona Lisa before creating hundreds of original mosaics. Each design took many hours but only fifteen minutes to dismantle afterwards. The lids would be sorted into boxes, I would fish out any that threw themselves down the six pockets, and I was free to play on the table again until the next idea.

Schools and companies then invited me to tell my story and facilitate workshops which is what I do now. The creating continues, of course, but no longer on the table. Instead, I now receive commissions to produce large murals at tourist attractions and museums.

My early career was in journalism, broadcasting, and stand-up comedy.

So that is me. How about you? Stick around here for a while and explore my art, my sea plastics finds, and even learn how I became The Shopping List Guy and wrote this book.

All the best,

Kieran