October is upon us which means it is time again for The Big Draw Festival, the festival is for anyone who loves to draw, as well as those who think they can't! It's an opportunity to join a global community in celebration of the universal language of drawing. This year’s theme is Living Lines: An Animated Big Draw Festival and will take place from 1-31 October 2017.
Every year, thousands of drawing activities connect people of all ages - artists, scientists, designers, illustrators, inventors with schools, galleries, museums, libraries, heritage sites, village halls, refugee organisations and outdoor spaces.
Since 2000, the annual, international celebration of drawing, which brings people together under the banner ‘drawing is a universal language’, regularly takes place in over 25 countries, involves over 1000 events and has encouraged over 4 million people back to the drawing board.
Open to a wide range of interpretations, this year's Big Draw Festival is designed to get your marks moving! Whether you decide to get animated, theatrical, illusionary, technical or messy here are some ideas on how LGfL can support you and your school in making your lines come to life!
Culture Street Offers a range of Interactive resources to inspire young people to get started and share their creativity, you can find quick, simple and inspiring whys to make flip book animations make a Flipbook online. Experiment with stop frame animation explore the history of early animation using a Kinora Viewer or take your students on a virtual workshop using the handy simple to follow videos to create your own ‘paper cut out animation’
A great way to introduce animation to Early Years is found in the J2E infant toolkit Your students can create simple animations using simple frame by frame illustrations that join together to make animations.
Linking drawing with illustrations is another way to inspire students, you can find multiple interviews with illustrators such as Tony Ross, Chris Riddell and David Roberts in reading zone live.
If you are looking at images to help inspire teaching and learning The Gallery is a growing collection, at present containing over 60,000 Image, Audio and Video resources covering a wide range of topics relevant to the curriculum. All of the resources are copyright cleared sothey can be downloaded, edited and re-purposed for educational use, both within the classroom and at home and offer arrange of imange to can start your drawing journey
If you need to brush up on your art skills or terminology then you can, Art Skills for Teachers offers simple explanations of a range of art techniques in action. The resource is full of unusual and easily accessible techniques to make art a truly inclusive activity for all members of your school community.
What will you be doing for the Big Draw? Please share your work with us via our Twitter and Facebook page.