Darwin’s Drawing Room

Artist Imogen Harvey-Lewis marked the 200th anniversary of Charles Darwin’s birth by encouraging 700 people of all ages to get up close and personal to animals of every shape and size, including stuffed museum specimens as well as grazing cows.

The only rule was to draw them life-size.

She ran five sessions in which young people drew everything from amoebas to whales. She

• invited the youth club to create a colourful tree of birds
• spent a day with a Home Education group drawing cows in a field
• helped Horsley Primary School pupils illustrate The Tiger who came to Tea
• introduced a week-long study of Darwin and evolution through science, mathematics, geography and ethics at Sir William Romney’s School

The completed menagerie of drawings included fifty metres of ladybirds and seventy metres of mice, herds of elephants and rhinos.

Many contributors joined the final celebrations at Prema Arts Centre to find alligators in the toilets, snakes on the banisters and giraffes in the lighting rig.

The entire building brimmed with life to the sounds of Saint-Saëns Carnival of the Animals played by the Tippett Quartet.

Imogen engaged her community with nature and evolution in a splendidly inclusive project – no beetle was too insignificant to be included!

Barbara Whatmore Charitable Trust Awards

The Barbara Whatmore Charitable Trust aims to increase public appreciation of the arts and music. Their awards recognise educators, artists, teachers and others who use The Big Draw to extend their audience’s perception of drawing and to engage them in innovative activities. They reward organisers whose events relate to their setting, local environment or community, show a clear purpose and good results. Individual drawings may have been used to create a collective artwork, or a public display to celebrate participants’ achievements.