In The Community

Carol Peace and Graham Woodruff started the Bristol Drawing School with the idea of promoting drawing for professional artists within their practice and to provide inspiration within the community involving disadvantaged groups such as the homeless and issues surrounding mental health.

Their plan was to provide an unashamedly high quality programme of exhibitions, courses and workshops in a professional dedicated space.

What they perhaps didn't initially realise was just how much the core activities of the Drawing School would play a strong role within the community of Bristol and surrounding areas. Through the provision of education in a professional but supporting environment they have seen clear and very rewarding improvements in the quality of life the courses and workshops generate for those involved.

Originally based at Paintworks on the Bath Road, and now at the Royal West of England Academy,Clifton, our students come from the local area of Bristol and Bath as well further a field from Cornwall, Exeter, London and Birmingham, either staying or eating with local businesses in the area.

Some examples of our work

In the last couple of years we have put on a number of free come and draw street studio in various shopping malls as part of the national Big Draw celebrations. There has been entertainment from Rose and Brian Popay from the very fine Fine Artistes who encourage passers by to sit down for a while and draw a still life, or take part in a large collaborative drawing of Bristol.

We always get a huge response with people of all ages overcoming the initial reluctance to take the time out from their frantic shopping and draw us a picture, some stay for only a couple of moments others for a number of hours!

In October 2009 we set out to use the Learning Revolution funding to run a drawing workshop at the school for the local adult learning group, art + power, who without funding have been unable to run activities for their members for many months.

For the workshop, which was led by the landscape artist Kate Raggett, we explored different ways and materials used to make drawings. Using inspiration from nature and seasonal subjects we experimented with different methods of mark-making, initially working small scale and then really big!

Participants benefited from the opportunity to explore their creativity, they enjoyed making the work and made the most of the instruction from Kate. They also benefited from being able to meet each other were able to chat during the breaks and there was a notable increase in social confidence from all of them by the end of the day.