October is nearly upon us which means it is time again for The Big Draw Festival, this international 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 visual literacy. Uniting people, pencils and pixels across the globe for the 19th colourful year.
The Big Draw team invites you to join them in celebration of their flagship month-long celebration of creativity, The Big Draw Festival. The festival theme this year is Drawn To Life: Creativity & Wellbeing. This theme works to encourage events and conversations around the role of mark-making and drawing – in its widest possible interpretation, as a life-enhancing tool not only to help express and navigate the challenges of life around us but also as a tool for healing.
Every year, during The Big Draw Festival, 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. Over 400,000 people take place in this annual festival that is hosted in 26 countries around the world.
Founded in 2000, The Big Draw is a visual literacy charity that promotes the universal language of drawing as a tool for learning, expression and invention. They lead a diverse range of programming including The Big Draw Festival which takes place in October, as well as The John Ruskin Prize which is the fastest growing multi-disciplinary art prize in the UK.
LGfL have a range of resources that can help support art in the classroom, from digital tools to helpful tutorials we have you covered!
Culture Street is a one-stop destination to introduce young people to contemporary artists, writers, curators and performers and their amazing work. The resource is jam-packed with interactive activities to inspire. There’s everything from making a clay coil pot to understanding what the Turner prize is all about.
A great way to introduce the idea of the creation of digital art for younger children is found in the j2e Tool suite, first off within the tool suite for your youngest students you can use jit5, students can create a range of marks by using a palette of tools/brushes, clip art and also have the ability to import images.
Speech bubbles and text can now be added to the digital canvas, vastly improving the learning possibilities, enabling storyboards to be created across a range of curriculum subjects. Also the new stamp feature takes the creativity on to new levels, you now have the ability to create your own digital stamps which can be saved in a ‘My Stamps’ area and be used across the JIT platform.
By using the microphone feature (which works as long as you have either an inbuilt microphone or an external microphone for your device) your students can add their voice to their own of art to explain their work/feelings or why not try to import various interesting works of art into the j2e Tool suite and allow children to explore being an art critic by talking about how the artwork makes them feel.
For older students, j2e Tool suite offers j2e5 a powerful digital tool, Students use j2e5 intuitively, just like a sheet of paper. The ease of use encourages their natural creativity. Combine text, graphics, animations, sounds, videos and embedded objects. j2e5 is an online, fun, creative tool, children create their own line art or use j2e5 to explore other works of art or artists.
Busy Things offers a range of activities to suit any age, it encourages young children to create art and music through experimentation. Choose from a large array of unusual tools and allow a picture or sound composition to evolve in front of you. No experience is necessary – just click or touch and watch or hear what happens! There are also ready-made templates and clipart to help you design a monster, superhero, a fashion item and much else! Older children can use Busy Paint to create artwork on a chosen topic. Busy Paint is an easy-to-use art tool offering drawing tools, brushes, shapes, stamps, clipart, symmetry options and more. Just search for The Big Draw in the special events calendar to get you started.
Linking drawing with storytelling is another way to inspire students, you can find multiple interviews with illustrators such as Tony Ross, Chris Riddel and Oliver Jeffers in Reading zone live, exploring their feelings on creating works of art that explore moods, emotions and tell epic stories.
For images to explore and to inspire LGfL Image Bank and LGfL Gallery are an ever-growing collections Image Bank has, with unique access to collections from The Royal Collection and The British Library, It’s purpose is to provide a free repository of high-quality materials copyright cleared for use in teaching and learning.
All of the resources in the Image Bank are archived at the highest quality available so they can be used on whiteboards, printed materials, animations and for any other educational application. All of the resources are copyright cleared so they can be downloaded, edited and re-purposed for educational use, both within the classroom and at home.
LGfL Gallery is a growing collection, at present containing over 60,000 images. All the resources are copyright cleared so they can be downloaded, edited and purposed for educational use, both within the classroom and at home and offer a range of images to start your drawing journey off.
If you need to brush up on your art skills or terminology then you can with Art Skills for Teachers In Partnership with the Ben Uri Gallery. This resource 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.
We also offer 2 other art units:
Ben Uri: Art in the Open This teaching resources contains information and points of discussion about works from the collection under the themes of Relationships, Movement and A Sense of Place. Also included in the resources are examples of how schools have used the content in a number of innovative and creative ways.
Ben Uri: Portraits & Identity Starting points for portraiture and identity projects in the classroom, including teacher's notes about selected works from the Ben Uri collection. It also offers activities suitable for Key Stages 2-4.
The Big Draw is also again working with the Today At Apple programme. The 2019 event programme which aims to explore the possibilities of digital drawing and combines The Big Draw with The Everyone Can Create create curriculum.
Drawing enthusiasts and reluctant doodlers alike are invited to try their hand at a range of fun workshops led by some of the world’s most innovative creative talent. These Big Draw/Apple partnership sessions will focus on the 2019 ‘Drawn To Life’ theme which explores the benefits of a more creative life for wellbeing. These sessions also serve to give visitors a fascinating insight into the many careers in which drawing plays a pivotal role.
Each store will host:
Art Lab for Kids: Draw Your Own Emoji.
Art Walk: Discovering Colour.
Art Walk: Drawing from Observation.
To find a session at an Apple store near you this October click here
The Everyone Can Create curriculum is a collection of project guides broken down into Music, Drawing, Photo and Video that bring creative expression to every subject, designed to help students develop and communicate ideas. Students use free apps available on any iPad and take advantage of the built-in camera, microphone, speakers, Multi-Touch display and Apple Pencil, look out for my series of blog posts exploring this creative curriculum in more depth coming in the month of October.
And don’t forget about the abundance of creativity opportunities you have with Adobe Spark for Education and Adobe Creative Cloud; you can support your students’ creative journeys from primary and secondary education and beyond with this package of creative tools.
Adobe Spark for Education makes it fast and easy for students and teachers to turn ideas into beautiful graphics, web stores, and video presentations with free app accessible from anywhere and on any device.
Adobe Creative Cloud gives you and your students access to a comprehensive set of the worlds best creative desktops apps including Photoshop CC, Illustrator CC, InDesign CC and Premiere Pro CC so that they can create and communicate anything they can imagine.
We would love to see how you are going to use LGfL services and resources to help energise your students learning, let us know by sharing your evidence of impact (it could be photos or students work) via our Facebook and Twitter and if we like and retweet your work you could win an LGfL goodie bag! and don't forget The Big Draw 2019 hashtags #TheBigDraw #DrawnToLife #BDF19