The University of Lincoln’s annual Big Draw Event hosted by the School of Design, Big Draw 23 took place on Monday and Tuesday of this week. (6th and 7th November). We had two stimulating days of events for 60 pupils from local feeder schools facilitated by colleagues from across the College of Arts, Social Sciences & Humanities. Staff from Fine and Performing Arts, School of Design, and the School of Film and Media all contributed to the event.
This year’s festival theme was ‘Drawing with Senses’, we chose sound and text as the focus of our workshops, (hearing and interpreting sound, and sight through reading and interpreting texts).
On Monday 6th our visitors were William Farr School from Dunholme, and Gyles Academy from Old Leake who took part in our Sand Sound and Vibrational Drawing workshops and our Poetry and Prose workshops. On Tuesday 7th our visitors were Tuxford Academy from Nottinghamshire, and Cowley Academy from Donington who took part in our Sound to Image workshops and ‘It’s the way you tell it’ workshops, (combining spoken text and image)
I want to thank Assunta Ruocco and Dan Hunt from Fine Art for their interpretative drawing workshop ‘It’s the way you tell it’,
technicians Oliver Ventress and Robb Britt for running their experimental Sand Sound and Vibrational Drawing workshops,
Wayne Lockwood and Jamie Oliver from Illustration who ran Poetry and Prose text visualising workshops,
and Rose Braisby and Sam Shipley from the School of Film and media for their Sound to Image drawing and radio production workshops where the school students were interviewed as they worked. (These interviews were edited and featured on Siren Radio and are also available on catch-up online). https://www.sirenonline.co.uk/player/on-demand/the-big-draw/
Thanks also to Alex Wright for his work photographing activities during the event.
All the school staff accompanying the pupils were hugely enthusiastic about the workshops and the opportunity to bring their students here. An intriguing comment came from one of the accompanying teachers attending on Tuesday who said to me, “Do you know what today has taught me? I need to loosen up!”
We had lots of great feedback from the event, many thanks to the teachers and their students for sending over such positive comments.
‘Thank you for having us. Students really enjoyed the day. They never had to think abstract like that before but it made them think outside the box.
I enjoyed getting inspiration from the artist that delivered the workshop. It gave me ideas to bring back to my school.
Looking around the BA and MA studies also gave me lots of ideas. They should do this more with the students as they would benefit from that too.
Students are still early thinking about Uni but it did open their eyes to it. There were a few who want to do architecture, and graphic design. The posters in the building helped with this I think!’
‘A huge thank you again for the trip it was immensely important for our pupils to experience art out of the classroom.
It helped our pupils to see what art could be without the restraints of the curriculum, it also inspired me to consider our curriculum to adapt to encourage more creativity.
As well as this it gave our pupils the opportunity to visit a university which most of them had not done before which helped them to start to consider their own pathways. We took year 9 so they are soon choosing their options and this trip helped to generate conversations around that. Some of our pupils do not have the encouragement from home to consider university so this was the first step in opening their futures.’
Our Big Draw Celebration is part of the University’s philosophy of schools and public engagement. Encouraging young people from all over our county to aspire to Higher Education is part of our community mission and naturally we would like the University of Lincoln to be their first choice. We believe that everyone can draw and enjoy drawing and through activities like the Big Draw we hope to encourage and inspire young people to become the artists and designers of the future.