The theme for this year’s festival is ‘Play’, putting the emphasis on letting loose, embracing happy accidents and, above all, having fun with drawing.
We’ve designed some exciting worksheets to help you to celebrate the festival in school.
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Founded in 2000, the festival is now celebrated in over 25 countries around the world, and it’s estimated it’s encouraged over 4 million people to go back to the drawing board.
The Big Draw charity was originally known as the Campaign for Drawing and is an arts education charity that works to promote visual literacy and drawing as a tool for learning, expression and invention. The charity’s foundation was inspired by John Ruskin, a Victorian artist and writer who wanted to teach people not how to draw, but how to see.
In fact, the charity believes in ‘drawing to learn, not learning to draw’. They say that everyone has the ability to draw and should be able to enjoy all the benefits that come from drawing.
The charity also refers to drawing as a universal language – one that can help people from all over the world communicate and build bridges.
And they point to the number of professions that rely on drawing as evidence of the importance of this skill – mathematicians, surgeons, architects, engineers and graphic designers are just some they refer to.
Not only is this festival the perfect opportunity for your pupils to discover a passion for drawing and the way it allows them to discover the world from a different perspective, but they could even win your school up to £750 thanks to the festival’s awards scheme.
And if your students are inspired by the festival, you could capitalise on their enthusiasm by taking them on a school art trip abroad, to be inspired by some of the world’s most famous artworks, which they can have a go at sketching themselves!
For more information on school art trips, please don’t hesitate to contact us.