Milton Keynes Big Draw

The education team partnered four agencies in an adventurous month of experimentation, engaging people of all ages with drawing.

Workshops with Adult Continuing Education expanded adult learners’ understanding of drawing – from sketchbooks to body art and 3-D investigations of space.

The Behaviour Education Support Team and MK Community Foundation supported six after-school programmes for parents and children, with trainee teachers from the University of Northampton, exploring identity and other ideas from the gallery exhibition.

Perceptions of formal art were challenged with blindfold drawing, living still-lifes, stretching to sketch, and turning the classroom into a giant sketchbook to record a day in the life of Milton Keynes.

The gallery’s Family Day developed these ideas into an exciting finale. Its highlights were the photo booth, in which people used pins to prick out photos of themselves and project their outline into the room; and ‘putty people’– volunteers who invited visitors to ‘mould’ them into poses depicting emotions as subjects for drawings. These drawings became starting points for drama workshops at the theatre next door.