Department of Fine Arts
INTERNATIONAL ARTS FESTIVALS
"BIG DRAW" -- LONDON -- FALL 2010

RESEARCHING THE BIG DRAW This project, involving two art education majors and one education major seeking a certification to teach art, was funded by a Francis Marion University Quality Enhancement Plan (QEP) grant.

The students, Amber Hekman, Angela Jackson, and Holly Todd researched the Big Draw, a highly successful national campaign for drawing in England, which has since spread internationally.  In England, Big Draw events occur over hundreds of sites, mostly during the months of October and November each year.

After reading and reporting on a number of Big Draw case studies, the students accompanied the project's principle investigator, Dr. Howard Frye, Francis Marion University Assistant Professor of Art Education.  They visited London for 5 days in late October 2010 to observe and participate in about a dozen Big Draw events in one of the campaign's featured events:  "Making Your Mark on the Future:  From London Bridge to Tower Bridge."

Among the events the group took part in were a swap station, where participants traded drawings (the finished drawings were placed on a clothes line); a collaborative effort to make an animated film, which was being organized by two recent graduates of London's Royal Academy of Art; an impromptu lesson in archeological drawing involving relics taken from the River Thames; and the annual "The Battle of the Cartoonists", a competition featuring some of the country's top cartoonists.

The students used what they learned as a basis for developing drawing activities for the University's Arts International Festival children's art area in Spring 2011.