The Big Heritage Draw
West Sussex
The Big Heritage Draw
The Big Heritage Draw - West Sussex involved 5 selected artists working with 15 heritage sites (3 each) across West Sussex. The aim of the project was to raise the profile of the Campaign for Drawing's Big Draw (a celebration of drawing that takes place each October) and engage the public with both large and small heritage centres. Steven worked with;
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Worthing Museum and Art Gallery and St Andrews School
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Wakehurst Place and the Millenium Seed Bank
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The Friends of Worth Park and Crawley Borough Counci
Each project had its own local brief, but the core aim was to work with and develop confidence within the heritage centres to develop their own creative projects, share skills and knowledge about the potential of the heritage sites and develop different approaches to interpreting collections and drawing. Some sites had had no previous experience of engaging the public.
Two of the projects won national recognition from the Campaign for Drawing as 'Drawing Inspiration' Award winners.
Worthing Museum
& Art Gallery
Worthing Museum wanted to work with 'hard to reach' groups of young adults and open the museum up to them. A project working with a group of 15yr olds from a local boys school was developed with Curator Laura Kidner. Taking them behind the scenes, exploring the museums collections and using a range of different drawing approaches students made observational drawings of artefacts in the stores and used acetates and markers to record objects on display. These images were projected onto large panels of paper 2.5m high and developed in to large scale collaborative drawings inspired by poster art and linked to the pupils project work in the school.
Images: Laura Kidner, Chris Drake and Steven Follen
The project received a 'Highly Commended ' Drawing Inspiration Award from The Campaign for Drawings national awards Scheme.
The project with the school developed the confidence of the museum staff to repeated the project for the general public. Further 'self directed 'drawing activities were developed which encouraged the public to explore the collections.
For "A Public Collection" the public created their own individual collection catalogue cards, when completed each card had drawings and information documenting the individuals favourite items within the museums collections. Visitors were encouraged to look through the catalogue and could take out the cards to help them explore the museum and find the artefact in the collection for themselves.
Millenium Seed Bank
@ Wakehurst Place
The work at Wakehurst Place followed the theme of 'filling spaces'. – The Millennium seed bank had just reached its billionth seed. Workshops were devised for a range of ages, to utilise different approaches to drawing and for both self directed projects and artist led workshops. One workshop, to celebrate the scientific work of the seedbank, engaged the public in observing and drawing seeds onto sheets with pre printed images of seed jars, another applied visitors drawings to recycled cardboard tubes to create a stack of 'storage jars' to fill the windows of the seedbank. Plant hunters notebooks were developed for the public head off and to explore the site, with guidance on different approaches to drawing participants were encourages to share their results in a collaborative creative outcome.
Friends of Worth Park
Crawley
Worth Park is an open space in Crawley which was once the grounds of a large hall (now demolished) owned by the Rothschild family. The grounds had been laid out by Pulman and are of historic significance. The aim of the project was to engage people in the site and spread the word about this relatively unknown and under-used site. The group of volunteers from the local croquet club undertook tours of the grounds and shared information about the house and its history sharing its remaining historical features. Visitors played croquet on the original lawns with paint covered balls and onlookers used small sketchbooks to sketch the players on the croquet lawn.
The project was a Campaign for Drawing - Drawing Inspiration Awards ‘Winner’.
Compulsive Productions Film
A film was made of the project, to inform and encourage other heritage sites to develop similar arts projects.The workshop with the pupils from St Andrews was included in this film.
See the whole Compulsive Productions film here: Big Heritage Draw West Sussex. (the sections of the film refering to Worthing Museum are between 0.55 - 1.24, 10.20 -14.40, 20.33- 24.33).
CPD Workshop for Sussex Curators and Museum Staff
A subsequent special CPD training day was organised to launch the Compulsive productions film about the Big Heritage Draw - West Sussex and included a workshop led by Steven for curators and museum workers from across the county, engaging them in a drawing project similar to the project with Worthing Museum and St Andrews School.
