every drawing tells a story

The BIG DRAW

The Big Draw is the world’s biggest drawing festival: it is an international celebration of drawing that has grown from one day in October 2000 in the UK to an annual month-long festival of drawing across the the world.

BIG DRAW IN DOVER 2015

Every Drawing Tells a Story is the Big Draw theme for 2015 and we invited Greg Stobbs, aka Squirl, to lead this year’s workshop on 26 October. About 60 people of all ages took part as participants and volunteers. It was nice to welcome new participants as well as to see some returning participants from last year. The challenge was to tell a story in a single, non-linear image, something which everyone succeeded in doing.

“It was lovely to see the different generations telling each other their stories” (Petra Matthews Crow).

The photos of the drawings have been incorporated into design by Squirl for window graphics to be placed in Dover Children’s Library.

Like last year, we were fortunate to have the use of the Dover Discovery Centre Cafe area thanks to Sarah Bottle, Coast Librarian.

The workshop was organised by Dover Arts Development in partnership with Dover Big Local Art31. It was supported by Dover Town Council and Dover Big Local.

All Photos by Fleur Whitfield.

An object to draw…

An object to draw…

An object to draw…

An object to draw…

…in a place

…in a place

…to tell a story

…to tell a story

…to tell a story

…to tell a story

…to tell a story

Participants of all ages

Volunteers from DBL Art31 group

Squirl (the artist)

Value

• An activity that kept people positively active and engaged: some participants came for a few minutes but stayed over an hour

• Although a one day activity can only make a small contribution to making Dover a better place to live, it may help by encouraging otherwise reluctant drawers to experience for themselves the positive effects of engaging in a contemplative activity for an extended period of time.

• This year's theme of story telling encouraged positive intergenerational communication.

Value: Ways to wellbeing

• Connection: By drawing together with others and in particular children with their parents

• Learning: new drawing and communication skills

• Taking notice: close observation of an object

Value

• It is hard to overstate the importance of drawing, not so much as a skill but rather as a process for thinking and learning. It is also all-absorbing and forces other things from the mind, making it valuable for boosting wellbeing and relieving stress. There are also other, perhaps less obvious benefits. The arts are always one of the first things to be cut, but a recent article suggests that the long-term economic toll of cutting the arts could actually harm a country's economic competitiveness.

Value

• A new study from Michigan State University found that childhoodparticipation in arts and crafts leads to innovation, patents, and increases the odds of starting a business as an adult. The researchers found that people who own businesses or patents received up to eight times more exposure to the arts as children than the general public.

•

• ..... Creative activity in childhood rewires your brain to think out-of-the-box according to the researchers. In fact, the group reported using artistic skills—such as analogies, playing, intuition and imagination—are all key to solving complex problems. This is common sense, but it’s good to have economic researchers validate the importance of the arts.

•

• https://www.psychologytoday.com/blog/the-athletes-way/201310/childhood-creativity-leads-innovation-in-adulthood

Value

‘Growth’ means more than economic recovery…

‘Growth’ means more than earning some paper…

‘Growth’ is exploring and learning from failure.

Through that process we tend to rise.

And what better teacher than enterprise?

(From All Existence is Contribution)

Value

Most school-leavers are not going to have job security. “With a life expectancy pushing 100, they will need skills of risk-taking, resilience, empathy and creativity to prosper in their long working lives. They will need multi-disciplinary knowledge and skills. They will have several careers and multiple sources of income.”

More and more of us are becoming and will have to become mini-entrepreneurs. https://www.tes.com/news/school-news/breaking-views/opinion-if-we-want-our-children-flourish-we-must-challenge-narrowing

Design for the library

Thank you

• http://www.dadonline.eu/updates/big-draw-2015/

• www.dadonline.eu

• info@dadonline.eu

• www.doverbiglocal.org