Tamworth draws a successful win in The Big Draw Festival 2017!

Tamworth Borough Council’s Arts & Events team has won a top award for an ‘outstanding event’ that brought the town centre to life with art and creativity last October.

People of all ages and creative abilities took part in The Big Draw Festival last year, celebrating the theme - ‘Living Lines’. Tamworth Borough Council was one of ten organisations selected from a shortlist of projects to win an award and a top prize of £500.   

The Big Draw event, named in Tamworth as ‘Art Attack’, offered people the opportunity to ‘have a go’ at art with a difference. Professional artists and illustrators attended the event to offer guidance and assist all budding artists, allowing people to express their creativity in an exciting and original way.

Nine artists joined Art Attack for a packed day of arts events and activities in Tamworth linked to the world’s biggest drawing festival, allowing the town centre to come alive as people of all ages were encouraged to pick up a pencil, paintbrush or Go-Go-Gadget arm and get creative.

Highlights of the day events included ‘art in the dark’ - spaces brightened with ultra violet painting of shapes and images; ‘tape that’ fun using colourful electrical tape to line the walls, ceilings and floor to create colourful shapes and a giant artwork and ‘body draw’ creativity to make and wear your drawing tools and let the body create the canvas.

The Big Draw (formally The Campaign for Drawing) was founded in 2000 and is an arts education charity that promotes visual literacy and the universal language of drawing as a tool for learning, expression and invention.

Throughout the year, The Big Draw demonstrates the social, economic and health benefits that drawing can bring and provides opportunities for everyone to access them. 

The world’s biggest drawing festival was brought to the town for the first time last year and Tamworth Borough Council’s Arts & Events team are very proud to have been honoured with the ‘Community, Participatory and Libraries Award’, sponsored by The Arts Society..

The Big Draw is linked as part of the Arts & Events team Arts in Unusual Spaces initiative; a two-year project funded by Arts Council England.

All registered Big Draw event organisers who took part were invited to enter the awards. Entries were received from all over the world. The winners are diverse, from an Australian artist, to schools and the Royal Society of Sculptors.

Full details on all award winners can be found here: www.thebigdraw.org/announcing-the-big-draw-festival-2017-award-winners

Cllr John Chesworth, Tamworth Borough Council’s Cabinet member for Culture & Operational Services, said: “This event has inspired and offered a unique and exciting opportunity for people to take part in art – with a difference. 

“I am delighted that the Arts & Events team have received this award for Tamworth Borough Council through creating opportunities for people of all ages to contribute to community art and try something new, while celebrating the town’s heritage. 

“Hard work, imagination and skill have helped to bring The Big Draw Festival to life in Tamworth with our first entry acknowledged as being creative, innovative and socially engaging.  I hope even more people will join this year’s event on Saturday, October 6, with the new theme of ‘play’ and explore fun ways to get creative.”

More information on arts and events in Tamworth is available at: www.tamworthartsandevents.co.uk