Penrice Academy’s Big Draw 2018 “Do your best and never stop.” (Stephen Wiltshire) This year for the Big Draw, students at Penrice Academy drew a city together. The Big Draw is a global community festival, which celebrates the universal language of drawing. Each year the Art Department has been part of the Big Draw, but usually on small scale and involving a small group of students. This year The Big Draw at Penrice was a whole school event, where all students and staff came together to create our own City, based on the work of artist Stephen Wiltshire. Mrs Elliott explains: “As Art gets bigger and better at Penrice every year, this year I felt we should make The Big Draw a really big draw. We decided to draw a city.” In order to make this project a success, the whole school – both students and staff – would have to work together and stick to the design; black pen on white paper. Mrs Elliott said: “We wanted everyone to contribute and they have done us proud with fantastic drawings of buildings inspired by the present and the future, surreal statues and fascinating bridges. We collected well over 1500 drawings.” British artist Stephen Wiltshire draws cities around the world from memory after just a short helicopter flight. “Stephen has been a massive inspiration to students. Firstly because of his autism, not only overcoming the issues it brings but embracing his incredible gift to remember visual detail. But he’s also an inspiration simply because of his amazing ability to draw.” Following an email from Leah in Year 10, Stephen got in touch to thank students for thinking of him. Mrs Elliott said: “We have been overwhelmed by the positive responses and the stunning drawings which have been created. It has been such a fantastic opportunity to bring the whole school together and has been an absolute pleasure to watch students creating, chatting and critiquing their work, together.” “A big thank you also to our Art Student Ambassadors who have been outstanding. We are very luckily to have such talented, committed, inspiring and hardworking students within the Creative Arts and I am very proud of them!” Pictured: Art Ambassadors Megan and Gemma Watch our Big Draw below. Read more about the Big Draw here. Read more about Stephen Wiltshire here.