DLWP wins Drawing Inspiration Award for Big Draw 2012
The De La Warr Pavilion has won a prestigious Drawing Inspiration Award from the Campaign for Drawing for its outstanding October 2012 Big Draw event, What’s your Journey?
Three hundred and fifty families undertook a series of creative journeys at De La Warr Pavilion in a setting designed to enhance their spirit of adventure, from special lighting to the Indiana Jones film score. The atmosphere was heightened by old maps and timetables, suitcases stacked in the entrance, and passports stamped after each task’s completion. Mark-making experiments included walking barefoot across paper with paint to make tracks, scratching lines and shapes on used 8mm film prior to screening, adding characters and monsters to the maze gallery, animating a Muybridge-like walking sequence, and using a giant Pantograph to trace the outline of a fellow visitor as an A4 image. Others enjoyed the freedom of drawing without seeing, as they created Desirable Destinations with coloured pens on acetate while blindfolded. Spurred on by instructions featuring a comic strip Indiana Jones figure attempting each activity, visitors were happy to experiment, and to see where their journeys took them.
Sally Carter, Trustee of the Barbara Whatmore Charitable Trust, presented Natalie Trimby, Learning and Participation Coordinator, and Joe Evans, animator and illustrator, with the Award and a commemorative certificate designed by Campaign Patron Sir Quentin Blake. The Campaign for Drawing selected What’s your Journey? for a Highly Commended Award from over 1500 events that celebrated drawing throughout the UK, and in other parts of the world.
Stewart Drew, Director of the Pavilion , says ‘The Big Draw is now firmly established as a major event in our calendar. The events led by Natalie, but developed in association a great artists like Joe Evans, attract lots of families and young people to engage with the building and our gallery programme. Of course the Big Draw couldn’t run without the many local volunteers who help make the day itself happen. Thank you to everybody who helped and participated in this inspiring annual event, hope to see you again in October!’
This is the third year the Pavilion has won an award for The Big Draw. Last year it won the Drawing Inspiration Trailblazer’s Award for The Octopus’ Garden, led by artist Sheridan Quigley. Sheridan revived the project to great acclaim this year as part of the Southbank’s Children’s Festival Imagine.
The Big Draw is an annual drawing bonanza, involving an estimated 200,000 people in inclusive creative activities. From 1- 31 October 2013, people from all walks of life will again join events across the UK, and internationally, in venues ranging from castles to shopping centres, national galleries to village halls, libraries to hospitals, universities to nature reserves. Their subjects and materials will be equally wide-ranging, spanning art, science and technology.
Sue Grayson Ford, Campaign Director, comments “The Big Draw is an open invitation to use drawing for learning, engagement and enjoyment. De La Warr Pavilion superbly demonstrated The Big Draw’s aims of bringing people together, engaging them creatively and supporting active learning. I am amazed at how inspired organisers expand drawing’s boundaries, and bring vast amounts of enthusiasm and imagination to their events.”
