The Big Draw is thrilled to announce the winners of the international Big Draw Festival Awards 2018/19. The Big Draw Award winners have been selected by a distinguished jury from a shortlist of projects that took place as part of Big Draw Festival 2018 celebrating ‘Play’. Every year, The Big Draw Festival Awards celebrate drawing and creativity without borders.

To find out more about The Big Draw Festival Awards, click here.

Community Participatory & Libraries Award (1/2): Mercury Mall, Romford, Essex

"It is so evident from the past year that the people of Romford love to draw, and we have so many stories of people coming together and really enjoying the experience of putting pencil to paper, either as a self-proclaimed enthusiast or just as someone who had forgotten their joy for drawing. We are looking forward to the 2019 theme and will be reflecting on some of our favourite moments from last year to really accelerate participation this year."

- Natalie Bays - The Mercury Mall

The team at the Mercury wanted to introduce a scheme of community activities that were fun, engaging and helped the shopping centre to break the sterile 'promotional' mould, and instead be a place for people to feel safe, comfortable and engaged. In a town where the average shopper comes into town three times a week, the Mercury feels it is their responsibility to offer soulful events that enhance wellbeing. 

The Mercury Mall ran events throughout the year to make the most of their Big Draw Festival subscription. Activities included: a whole week celebrating International Woman’s Day, Beatrix Potter and female artists during Easter; drop in public events, for example with The NO Collection, a contemporary arts pedagogical collective, who ran a drawing and story time session with children with additional needs; an alternative halloween event where the Mercury partnered with the Brentwood Road Gallery and hosted a two day fashion illustration workshop with a young parisian fashion illustration artist, Rana Fadavi; a Christmas ‘Mary Poppin’s’ street painting mural workshop’ and a glass painting craft with two local artists.

For The Mercury, taking part in the Big Draw Festival has offered wonderful opportunities for Partner Building, bringing something positive to the town and bringing something inspiring to shopping centres. They were thrilled at the amount of activity and participants of all ages getting involved in the workshops. 

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Community Participatory & Libraries Award (2/2): Ynyshir Primary School, Wales, UK (with Workers Gallery & RCT Arts Services)

"Taking part in The Big Draw raised [the students'] confidence and self-esteem, and art has opened doors in their imagination and given them a sense of achievement and aspiration... I am so proud of their achievements, and so pleased to be part of something that is raising the profile of Art and making it so accessible."

- Samantha Rogers - Teacher, Ynyshir Primary School

Yrnshir wanted to encourage their students to experiment and have fun using charcoal and drawing in both a local gallery studio space and the outdoor environment. By introducing charcoal, putty rubbers and different types of paper and allowing participants to play and experiment in a gallery environment using professional easels, they were given the confidence to then work outside. Pupils learnt new skills, discovered new equipment and materials and drew experimentally, developing a new visual language through 'Play'.

The students' drawings were shared in a pop up exhibition, alongside professional artists and their artwork. The gallery became an accessible space for the participants and their families who came to see the show – most had never visited ‘a’ or ‘the’ gallery before! Both participants and organisers learnt that drawing and playing is a simple activity to do with others, and that everyone could create something truly individual and special. Visitors were bowled over by the children’s work on display and could not believe the high quality of the drawing (especially as it was created outside on a cold rainy day!).

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Museums & Galleries Award: Hauser & Worth, Somerset, UK

"The Big Draw offers a fantastic platform for Hauser & Wirth to champion the value of creativity and arts education through the work of internationally recognised artists... Inspiring others and learning at the same time is at the heart of our educational ethos and we are proud to accept this award from the Big Draw, which has the capacity to extend this message to so many others. Thank you to the Big Draw!"

- Debbie Hillyerd - Education Team, Hauser & Wirth Somerset

Hauser & Wirth sought to encourage their participants to have fun while learning about art, design, and drawing. Running three events in October, they aimed to broaden participants’ understanding of what drawing can be by using experimentation, chance and accident in the activities developed.

Their events included: ‘Make your own Sumi Ink’, inspired by Matsutani’s use of the material, in which participants produced the ink to then blow, paint and mark across scrolls of paper; ‘Bubble Prints’; ‘Drawing Playground’ in which children printed onto large sheets of paper by walking on bucket stilts dipped in paint; Finally, participants made a concertina style sketchbook into which they collaged their outcomes of the other activities to take home with them. sand pendulums to create ephemeral drawings. They also held an adult workshop, ‘Exploring Our Environment Through Drawing’ with artist Emma Stibbon, during which 15 participants reacted to the local environment to create experimental drawings with unique materials.

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Art Clubs & Societies Award: Ruskin in Wyre and the Guild of St George in partnership with Wyre Community Land Trust, Worcestershire, UK (in partnership with Tokyo arts group, Japan)

Ruskin in Wyre and the Guild of St George in partnership with Wyre Community Land Trust organised their events in conjunction with their friends in Tokyo with the aim to swap both cultural crafts, and their associated materials and tools. They wanted to widen their participants cultural understanding through the process of experimenting with traditional British and Japanese drawing methods and materials. 

Artist Hilary Baker led tutorials on how to use traditional Japanese brushes and ink, describing how to hold the brush and how to use it in different ways to create different strokes on the washi paper. After describing the various techniques participants were free to incorporate their own styles and created some wonderful pieces of art! They also had a live feed to their friends in Japan to see how they were getting on using the drawing charcoal they had made.

They ran their Big Draw events as part of their HLF funded project 'Ruskin in Wyre'. The events helped them attract more people to Ruskin Land and connect them with the beautiful surroundings of the Wyre Forest, which is one of the aims of the HLF project.

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Guest Panellists' Choice Award: Strong Close Nursery School, West Yorkshire, UK

"The school already valued the arts in the curriculum, however we needed the inspiration and support that working with an Artist can have on practice. In appointing Lou Sumray we gained the energy and commitment to do this through the use of a range of media and materials. Entering The Big Draw was symbolic of all this and so we are delighted that the impact of this partnership has been recognised in this award."

- Helen Jones - Acting Head, School Strong Close Nursery School

Strong Close Nursery ran three sessions with their students, one of which also involving the parents. Inside there were trays of paint for finger drawing, whiteboards with magnetic lolly sticks and markers, and iPads for drawing using the 'brushes app'. Outside they set up clipboards, long lengths of paper with logs and sticks, paper on the fences, cardboard and masking tape. On the day that the parents were invited they set up the hall/multi purpose room with posca pens for mirror drawing, large paper + pens, pens on sticks, OHP + acetate and a light box with sand.

The team found it amazing how focussed the children were, and the independent exploration and surprising routes that they took, like saying "no Pencil" and finding sticks to draw in the dust or creating a massive "My garden" drawing that got bigger and bigger. Adults who may have initially felt nervous around the idea of drawing felt comfortable in the fun, sociable environment which meant they stayed and really joined in.

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Secondary School Award: Kingsdale Foundation School, London, UK

"Taking part in this prestigious competition has allowed us to engage with students across all year groups who not only enjoy art and want to do more, but also those who specialise in other areas and no longer take art as part of their curriculum. The theme of ‘Play’ inspired us to explore synesthesia by uniting the senses of hearing to the process of drawing sound, so at the core of the piece was music by our incredible Junior Steel Pan Band."

- Amy Brocklesby - Teacher, Kingsdale Foundation School

The event at Kingsdale Foundation School was a fantastic opportunity to work collaboratively with the music, dance and drama departments and to dispel the idea that you have to be good at drawing to create brilliant and exciting art. 

To fit the theme of ‘Play’, they recorded the school Junior Steel Pan Band play their favourite piece of music. Students across the school used a wide variety of different materials and techniques, from small controlled A5 pages, to huge sheets of collaborative work created whilst dancing and drawing in response to the music. Students started each task with slight trepidation, but rapidly grew in understanding and confidence.

Despite the same music inspiring every piece of drawing, the outcomes were wide and varied, all expressive and recording the sounds being heard. Afterwards, they rolled the papers like organ pipes and presented them side by side, united like our students, as one giant organ at the heart of the school. Every student who participated said they found the experience of drawing to music without boundaries satisfying and liberating!

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Primary School Award (1/2): Braeburn School Gitanga Road, Nairobi, Africa

"We as a school were fully immersed in the playful nature of Art and discovery. Our school became a canvas to reinvent.  Each pupil learnt about the work of Jackson Pollock: splashing, dripping, spraying, blowing and dancing with paint. It was a very messy day which enabled all the students to embrace their creativity, while also having fun."

- Suzanne Creevey - Head of Art, Braeburn School

The aim of the day was to expose the whole school to a fun day of Art, encourage everyone to work with a range of media and become familiar with the work of Jackson Pollock. Activities ranged from action art using water guns, balloons, tires and balls or string sculptures to Zentangles to dancing with paint.

The KS3 pupils loved building their string sculpture in their school block, winding rainbow colours into a huge spider web of colour, firing paint at a huge ‘PLAY’ canvas with water guns and getting very messy!

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Primary School Award (2/2): St Georges Primary, Worcester, UK

"The project was inspired by Jackie Morris' and Robert Macfarlane's beautiful book with its celebration of nature communicated through words and picture. Our Big Draw was about celebrating play in and with the natural world. It is a fantastic achievement for a small school like St George's to have won this award and it is particularly important in the 21st century that we should do all that is possible to encourage children, families and teachers, in fact everyone, to draw anytime, anyplace and anywhere!"

- Claire Horacek - St George's CE Primary School

Using The Lost Words by Jackie Morris and Robert Macfarlane, St George’s aimed to encourage parents and children to put down technology and play together within the natural world, encourage parents and children to have fun together and to draw using objects and their own physicality.

Participants created collaborative drawings from found natural objects, large-scale charcoal drawing, printing and hanging structures that we attached to trees. They encouraged discovery through drawing but also encouraged naming leaves, plants, fruits and nuts in the languages of the parents. Parents and pupils valued making artwork from nature in a playful environment, and pupils looked more carefully at the natural world.

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People's Choice Award Winner: 24H Drawing Lab, Rome, Italy

"The Drawing Lab considers drawing as a non-verbal thinking process: an act of self-confidence where someone needs to trust themself to capture reality. We strongly believe in the multidisciplinary nature of drawing as well, which embraces various fields of knowledge beyond art, such as mathematics, psychology, medicine, astronomy and many others."

- Rivka Spizzichino & Sara Spikkichino - founders of 24H Drawing Lab

Rivka and Sara wanted to give people the chance to draw in one of the most beautiful palaces in Rome, the Palazzo Altemps. Visitors learnt about the history of the place and the sculptures, and then draw in a place of beauty and history. Thanks to a partnership between 24H Drawing Lab and the Direction in Palazzo Altemps, visitors were given free entry into the Palazzo Altemps.

People spent a sunny morning drawing, and testing out new materials provided by Fabriano. They had a tour guide who provided lots of interesting information, and then all the people visited the palace, in a friendly group passionate about art and drawing.

Play your part in The Big Draw Festival 2019: #DrawnToLife

Could it be you picking up a Big Draw Festival Award in 2019?* This year’s theme is ‘Drawn to Life’, focusing on the vital role of creativity for our health and wellbeing. As ‘social prescribing’ gains greater recognition as an effective tool for living a healthier and happier life, creating opportunities for accessible, fun, creative events has become more important than ever. Find out more about the benefits of organising your own event here. 

Ready to go? Registration for The Big Draw Festival 2019 is now open!

*Only registered organisers are eligible for both the panel selected and People's Choice Big Draw Festival Awards.