Drawing Inspiration Award for LDC
| Published: 19th March 2008 21:26 |
Lichfield District Council's Arts Development officer wins a prestigious Drawing Inspiration Award for a top 2007 Big Draw event.
Celia Houghton, Lichfield District Council's Arts Development Officer, received a prestigious Drawing Inspiration Award from the Campaign for Drawing for the successful event she created for The Big Draw 2007. Last October, 1,350 events took place in 1,200 venues across the UK. Out of all these Big Draw programmes, Lichfield District Council won a Runner Up award for Inventions & Engineering.
Lichfield's fifth Big Draw campaign saw lots of workshops and events happening throughout the district. Lichfield's Big Draw 2007 was launched in Three Spires Shopping Centre, where 130 shoppers posed for photos with their heads thrust through a hole in a blackboard, after chalking their own imaginative frames.
Three heritage sites also set the scene for three very different creative events. The first was in the Samuel Johnson Birthplace Museum, where Celia organised a workshop inspired by Johnson's passion for tea. Keen artists used teacups and saucers to make printed paper tray cloths.
The Drawing Machine competition was held in inventor Erasmus Darwin's House. Children won prizes for the best drawing machine designs and working models. Also, visitors to Chasewater Heritage Railway recalled their journeys on large paper rolls, or used the train's motion to produce wobbly sketches.
Schools also took part in this year's Big Draw, with local artists visiting classes to hold workshops on varied activities such as wire wheels, pop-up books, embossing metal and becoming ‘human pencils' by drawing with different parts of the body.
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Adults at two mental health drop-in centres were proud of the work they made for a communal banner and giant wall hanging.
Celia Houghton, Arts Development Officer for Lichfield District Council, said: "I am thrilled to be recognised in this way by Campaign for Drawing. I think it's important to encourage everyone to see art and creativity all around them, which is why I used unusual means to reach people in unexpected places. Involving local artists, people and places ensure that Lichfield's Big Draw is a community event and I am looking forward to this year's campaign which will be just as imaginative."
The award was presented in London at a ceremony hosted by the Royal Academy of Engineering at The Royal Society on 12 March 2008, where Lichfield District Council's Arts Development received £100 and a commemorative certificate drawn by leading illustrator and Campaign patron Quentin Blake. Their winning event is illustrated in the Campaign's new book, which will be sent to thousands of museums, galleries, heritage sites, schools and community spaces as inspiration for the 2008 Big Draw.
The Big Draw sweeps the UK each October with a drawing bonanza, involving an estimated 350,000 people in exhilarating, and often unconventional, creative activities. Children, parents, grandparents, conservationists, designers, artists, cartoonists and scientists meet in venues ranging from castles to shopping centres, national galleries to village halls, libraries to hospitals, universities to nature reserves - to draw with charcoal, paint, mud, even skateboards and robots.
Sue Grayson Ford, Campaign Director, commented "Lichfield District Council's Arts Development fully demonstrated Big Draw's aims of bringing people together, engaging them creatively and supporting active learning - all through drawing. I am always amazed how organisers with limited resources, but unlimited enthusiasm and imagination, are able to expand the boundaries of drawing."
