What is the Big Draw?
The Big Draw is a month-long season of participatory activities for people of all ages and abilities. Over 1000 events will use drawing, painting and other creative media to engage participants with museum and gallery collections, historic sites – and each other – in new and enjoyable ways. Big Draw events encourage everyone to expand the boundaries of drawing by experimenting with pencils, paint, charcoal, sand, clay, digital imagery, choreographed movement, vapour trails and much more.
Big Draw Day is Saturday 10 October, but more than 1000 events will take place throughout October in galleries, museums, art clubs, heritage and environmental sites, libraries, archives, science, community and shopping centres, colleges and schools across the UK, and internationally.
All this is organised by The Campaign For Drawing
The Campaign For Drawing
The Campaign for Drawing was launched in 2000 by the Guild of St George, a small charity founded by John Ruskin, whose writings on art, architecture, natural history, social and economic issues helped to shape Victorian cultural life. In 1871, he set up the Guild to assist the liberal education of artisans. The Guild initiated the Campaign to celebrate Ruskin's centenary and to promote his belief that drawing is a key to understanding and knowledge. Now an independent charity, the Campaign raises the profile of drawing as a tool for thought, creativity, social and cultural engagement. It has developed two programmes to encourage the use of drawing by professionals and others: The Big Draw and Power Drawing
The Campaign has created a new regard for the value of drawing to help people see, think, invent and take action. Its long-term ambition is to change the way drawing is perceived by educationalists and the public. This has won support from leading practitioners in the creative industries and in art, architecture and design colleges, signaling an overdue realisation that drawing is fundamental to the training of students in these disciplines. The Campaign takes a wider view. It sees drawing as a basic human skill useful in all walks of life. The Campaign's work will finish when the words 'I can't draw' are dropped from our vocabulary.
For further information visit www.campaignfordrawing.org.uk
The Big Draw Bristol website is organised and funded by the Bristol Drawing School
For full national Big Draw listings and further information about The Campaign For Drawing