The Campaign for Drawing aims to get everyone drawing!

Patrons: Sir Quentin Blake, Lord Foster of Thames Bank, David Hockney OM, Andrew Marr, Sir Roger Penrose OM, Sir Richard MacCormac, Gerald Scarfe CBE and Posy Simmonds MBE

If you can draw, even a little bit, you can express all kinds of ideas that might otherwise be lost - delights, frustrations, whatever torments you or pleases you. David Hockney Campaign Patron

Launched in 2000 by the Guild of St George as a tribute to its founder, the great Victorian philosopher and critic John Ruskin, the Campaign promotes drawing as a powerful tool for thought, creativity and communication. We share Ruskin’s belief that drawing turns looking into SEEING, and makes us care more about our environment. An independent arts education charity since 2006, the Campaign has proved that drawing supports learning in many subjects, and is a skill for life. We work with local authorities, educational, health, cultural and community organisations to show how drawing instils confidence, raises attainment and connects people of all ages with museum and gallery collections, and the natural and built heritage.

Drawing gave me back my life, so why don’t we still teach it? Andrew Marr Campaign Patron

The Big Draw

An annual celebration of drawing, The Big Draw involves more than 200,000 people in more than 1200 events every October, in venues ranging from village halls and nursery schools to castles and national museums. It has spread to twenty countries on five continents. Twelve Drawing Inspiration Awards, worth up to £1000 each, recognise the most innovative events, which are published as case studies. Each year brings new evidence that drawing can be both an inclusive public activity and a private passion.

The Big Draw seems to have struck something in the national consciousness – it’s as though everybody had just been waiting to be told they are allowed to draw. Perhaps it isn’t surprising – we live under a bombardment of manufactured images, and in the face of that we need to be able to draw as a way of discovering the reality of the world about us, as well as the life in ourselves. Quentin Blake Campaign Patron

The 2014 Big Draw, 1 October-2 November

For the second year, The Big Draw is working with the Family Arts Festival to encourage more theatres, concert and dance venues to offer drawing as a way for families to further enrich these shared experiences. The 2014 Big Draw theme is sustainability and the future of our environment.

In our fast-moving technological world, visual literacy is essential. Creative industries – from architecture and engineering to fashion, website design and video games – are eager to recruit young people with drawing skills. But drawing is no longer seen as mainstream within the curriculum, even within Art & Design qualifications.

In 2013, our TEA (Thinking, Expression and Action) programme inspired many secondary school teachers and students’ drawing experiences. Documentations of their projects form a comprehensive resource at t2.nadfas.net accessible to teachers across the UK.

We aim to guide more and more teachers to use drawing to raise their students’ aspirations; to help young people develop visualisation skills and signpost routes to appropriate training and employment in the creative industries.

Thanks for giving me the language to explain What & Why & How we teach art, TEA teacher

Professional Development

Join the Campaign

Everyone can organise a Big Draw. Register at campaignfordrawing.org and you will find everything needed to run an event. Afterwards you can apply for one of our Drawing Inspiration Awards.

Find out more See campaignfordrawing.org for case studies and events.

Support Us Our programmes have more than repaid generous investment from charitable trusts and corporate sponsors over thirteen years, but we cannot develop our work without new supporters and partners.

Visit bigdrawshop.co.uk

Buy our Power Drawing books for teachers and a range of unique artworks. Every purchase helps us to extend our work and reach.

TEA was a collaboration with NSEAD and NADFAS, made possible by a grant from the Helen Rachael Mackaness Trust

The Big Draw 2014 is sponsored by

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