The judging panel has been announced for our first ever digital residencies, and will include the following arts and culture professionals: Jade Montserrat, Yiying Lu, Tanya Raabe-Webber, Dapo Adeola, Kate Mason and Eleanor Pender.
The Big Draw is offering UK-based artists three funded digital residences. These residencies are open to all artists, and The Big Draw encourages applications from immigrant and diaspora artists, artists who identify as LGBTQIA or as disabled. *Please note, applications are now closed for our digital residencies*
The digital residencies will take place in late May and June 2021 and encourage artists to propose challenging, engaging and intriguing work in any discipline or medium, and work with both digital and physical materials. The digital residency will look to spotlight the chosen artists’ work, feature them on The Big Draw blog, undertake an Instagram Live with The Big Draw Director and invite them to takeover The Big Draw social media channels. Work produced and any connected content will be shared online with The Big Draw audiences around the world.
This project work is funded through the Cultural Emergency Fund – Arts Council England.
Read the press release here.
Learn more about this year’s judges below:
Jade Montserrat
Jade Montserrat’s work uses mark-making and performance drawing installation to explore transformative justice, ethical practice, and the healing and connective qualities of drawing. She lives and works in Scarborough, North Yorkshire. Recent solo exhibitions include Iniva, London; Manchester Art Gallery as the first Future Collect artist (both 2020); Humber Street Gallery; Bluecoat, Liverpool (both 2019). Group shows include Lisson Gallery (2021); ICA, Philadelphia (2018). Residencies include Hospitalfield (2020-2021); East Street Arts (2020). awards include Henry Moore Foundation (2020) and Jerwood Drawing Prize: Student Award (2017) and she was the Stuart Hall Foundation practice-based PhD candidate at The Institute for Black Atlantic Research, The University of Central Lancashire (2017 - 2020).
Yiying Lu
Yiying Lu is an award-winning artist, entrepreneur, global educator, and bilingual TEDx speaker. Born in Shanghai China, and educated in Sydney, Australia, and London, Yiying runs her innovation studio in San Francisco while being an Adobe Global Creative Ambassador and serving as a San Francisco Arts Commissioner. Named one of the “Fast Company’s Most Creative People in Business”, Yiying speaks about Cross-Cultural Design, Creativity & Innovation in English and Chinese, at conferences around the world. Yiying has created iconic art and campaigns for corporations from Disney to Apple. She is also the artist behind the dumpling and Boba Tea Emoji, the “Twitter Fail Whale" and the Chinese papercut style Mickey Mouse for Disneyland Shanghai.
Tanya Raabe-Webber
Tanya Raabe-Webber is an acclaimed disabled/visual artist challenging the notion of identity within contemporary portraiture. She often creating portraits of high profile disabled and diverse people during live sittings in high profile public art galleries and venues. Tanya uses a mixture of traditional and digital painting and drawing techniques, often fusing the two together in an interactive live environment, inviting physical and online audiences to join in. A Big Draw Ambassador, Tanya works to raise awareness of Disabled Creatives. In April 2021, Tanya announced a new Collaborative Sketchbook series, working with four artists in separate hand-folded sketchbooks, taking turns to respond to each other’s artworks.
Dapo Adeola
Dapo Adeola is an award-winning illustrator and designer who creates characters and images that challenge expectations around race and gender in a fun and upbeat way. He is the co-creator and illustrator of bestselling picture book Look Up! — winner of the Waterstones Children’s Book Prize and the Number 1 debut picture book of 2019. Dapo is also illustrator of the Versify fiction series The Last Last-Day-of Summer and other upcoming series with Macmillan and Bloomsbury. London born and bred but of Nigerian heritage, when he’s not busy cooking up new characters and adventures, Dapo runs illustration and character design workshops with children or organising events to help highlight the possibilities of a career in illustration to underrepresented members of the Black diaspora.
Kate Mason
Kate Mason, Director at The Big Draw, has worked consistently in a variety of roles across the arts, heritage, community, cultural and creative industries sectors for 26 years. Kate is a Companion of The Guild of St George, an educational charity devoted to the arts, crafts and the rural economy which was founded in 1871 by John Ruskin. Kate is a Trustee of the House of Imagination, an arts-based action research charity which supports children in their exploration and expression of ideas, helping them develop creative skills for life. Kate has also recently become Chair of the Society of Designer Craftsmen, an organisation established in 1887 and originally called The Arts & Crafts Exhibition Society. Kate is an RSA Fellow and likes to draw, sew and knit.
Eleanor Pender
Eleanor Pender is Communications and Marketing Manager at The Big Draw. A life-long supporter of the arts and creative industries, Eleanor is a communications strategist, writer and likes to draw, paint and print. Eleanor has worked across the creative industries for close to 10 years, in theatre, literature, festivals and libraries, coordinated collaborative digital media and urban art projects across Europe, and supported creative initiatives for children and young people in the UK and internationally. Alongside her work in the sector, Eleanor is an experienced event moderator, chairing book festival events, literary panels and conventions since 2015, including the Edinburgh International Book Festival, Cymera Festival and Bristol Women’s Literature Festival.