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We caught up with Lucy Ward, Drawing Lead for the School of Arts at UWE Bristol and Senior Lecturer in Fine Art, to talk about drawing, teaching and creative community.
The School of Arts’ new initiative places a strong emphasis on the cross-disciplinary uses of drawing and its importance across all creative subjects, with Drawing Week forming a key part of this approach. We were delighted that UWE chose to make Drawing Week part of The Big Draw Festival this year, and the Big Draw team loved heading over to Bristol to deliver one of the workshops!
Could you tell us a bit about UWE Bristol and the School of Arts?
The School of Arts at UWE feeds the cultural life of Bristol. The main campus is set in a deer park, just on the edge of the city, and has amazing technical and teaching facilities. There are also studios and workspaces in the city centre, including the BA Fine Art studios in Spike Island, and other courses based at Arnolfini.
You’re the Drawing Lead for the School of Arts and a Senior Lecturer in Fine Art. Could you share a bit about your background and what drew you to focus on drawing in your teaching and research?
I realised I loved drawing during my Foundation and went on to do a degree in Drawing and Applied Arts, and then an MA in Drawing too. I started teaching by chance, really. A group of friends had started running drawing workshops, I joined them and we worked together devising experimental drawing sessions. It was great.
Teaching drawing is exciting because it’s both so easy and so complex. On the one hand you can get started with pretty much anything you have to hand, and on the other you can explore really challenging ideas, from the science of seeing, to gesture and emotion in performance, to the documentation of political action.
Drawing has been at the heart of UWE Bristol’s art and design disciplines for over 60 years and is now part of the curriculum at all undergraduate levels in the School of Arts - something we very much approve of! How do you hope students will engage with drawing?
There has been expertise in the field of Drawing since the art school was founded. In particular there have been two successful BA programmes centred on Drawing that ran from 2002 to 2023. There has been a long-term research focus on Drawing too, and strong technical teaching including life drawing sessions two or three times a week that are open to the whole School.
Drawing has always been part of the Arts programmes across the School, but our new initiative will focus on the cross-disciplinary uses of Drawing and its importance in all creative subjects. We will be encouraging more drawing from our students and celebrating ways that drawing can be used in non-traditional way, for example in critical thinking and analysis of theory.
What role do you think drawing plays across different creative practices?
While ‘learning to draw’ is important for some of our students, it’s not for everyone. But learning how to use drawing, and how drawing can be useful is essential. Drawing can be a tool for thinking, for investigating, for experimenting and for communicating, and in these ways drawing is important for all our students.
Could you tell us a bit about what students got up to during Drawing Week? Were there any particular highlights?
We invited staff in the School of Arts to take part by running an activity and the response was amazing. We had 37 academic staff, 18 technical staff and 10 research staff who ran sessions. This meant we had a really broad range of things for students to choose from, including design drawing, mark making, reportage drawing in the city at night, drawing with knitting and sewing machines, life drawing in our theatre - with stage lighting and disco balls! Our photo techs built a huge camera obscura in one of the photo studios, that was so special. Students were drawing across the campus, in every available space, inside and out. Lots of sessions took place in venues across the city too, helping to introduce our new students to their new home.
This year’s Big Draw Festival theme, 'Drawn Together', was all about celebrating community, collaboration, and connection. How does this theme resonate with UWE and your work with students in the School of Arts?
Drawing Week is part of a new curriculum design in the School of Arts and one of the aims is to facilitate more collaborative and interdisciplinary learning. One of the benefits of Drawing Week is that students were learning alongside people from other courses, gaining insights into other ways of thinking and making new friends.
Something unexpected about Drawing Week is the impact it has had on staff in the School. Our focus in planning the events was on students, but it turns out that it has been really positive for staff too. They have really enjoyed working together on this, on activities outside their usual schedule and on meeting students from different courses. It has offered them a chance to be experimental and to try new ways of teaching and collaborating with other staff. I am so pleased about this!
Do you have any advice for other universities or art schools considering running their own drawing programmes?
Do it!
Looking ahead, are there any other initiatives or projects coming up that you’re particularly excited about sharing with students or the wider community?
We’re spending some time reflecting on Drawing Week and how we can make it even better next year. We also have a plan, as part of our curriculum re-design, to embed drawing across all levels of teaching in the school, so we’re working on how this will look and what drawing can bring to students as they and their work develops during their course.
