The City of Newcastle recently held Australia’s first large-scale drawing event — ‘The Big Draw Newcastle’ — attracting more than 2500 participants and representing a unique collaboration between the City’s creative, business and cultural communities.
The first ‘Big Draw’ was held as a one-day event in the United Kingdom in 2000, run by The Campaign for Drawing, an independent charity that works to raise the profile of drawing and promote it as a tool for thought, creativity and social and cultural engagement.
‘The Big Draw’ has now become the world’s biggest celebration of drawing, with a month-long festival running across the UK throughout October each year and more and more people from around the world joining in with their own ‘Big Draw’ events.
In mid-summer 2013, Newcastle’s ‘Big Draw’ brought together seven service units from The City of Newcastle Council, as well as the Maritime Centre museum, Livesites NOW (a local business improvement association), the University of Newcastle’s Design and Illustration Faculties and individual artists
and educators.
The one-day event stretched from Newcastle Harbour across the City’s cultural precinct, finishing at the Art Gallery. Participants were encouraged to walk between locations and try out a range of drawing activities, from drawing a pirate treasure map with Captain Luke ‘n Silly to more complex stop motion production and animation techniques.
The ‘Big Draw’ also employed many local artists and educators to run out door drawing activities ranging from portraits drawn on bus tickets to drawing along to the tempo of old surf songs. Many of these activities generated into collaborative artworks that evolved throughout the day.
Director of ‘Future City’ at the City of Newcastle, Judy Jaeger said, “It was great to see these public spaces come to life and deliver on the ‘play’ element of our vision of ‘Live, Work and Play’ in the Newcastle City Centre.”
Audience Development & Visitor Services Coordinator Newcastle Art Gallery, Lauren van Katwyk was delighted with the day’s outcomes for the Gallery.
“We were thrilled with our ‘Big Draw’ event. Gallery educators pushed the definition of drawing by using stop motion production and animation techniques on a huge scale.
“We started off with inspiration from significant works from the collection — artists like Brett Whiteley, David Aspden and Tony Tuckson, for example. Then our Gallery educators, with the help of over 500 members of the public, guided our stop motion project through an evolution of all these fantastic works of art.”
All of the partners and participants in Newcastle’s ‘Big Draw’ expressed enthusiasm about the success of the day, and there is a subsequent push to make it one of the City’s significant annual events.
For councils interested in creating their own ‘Big Draw’ events, visit: www.campaignfordrawing.org
