Bradford 2025 UK City of Culture has today launched DRAW!, a nation-wide drawing project inspired and supported by?Bradford-born artist David Hockney who has been announced as the first artist to present a theme for the project.
DRAW! invites people from across the UK to take part by creating and sharing a drawing inspired by a particular theme set by a different artist each month and aims to encourage people of allages to pick up a pencil, pen or iPad and reflect on our everyday lives through drawing.
January kicks off with the first theme chosen by David Hockney who is encouraging people to draw “something you find beautiful”. This could be anything around you that you find beautiful, inspired by his front cover of the Bradford District telephone directory which he was invited to design in 1989. The drawing depicts a charming picture of where he was born – a deep valley with mills, terraced houses, City Hall and a little blue bus.
David Hockney said:
“The world is very very beautiful?if you look at it, but most people don’t look very much – Looking at the world is good for you.”
The public can share their drawings by uploading them to bradford2025.co.uk/mydrawing or share them through social media with the hashtag #bradford2025 or by tagging @bradford_2025. People can send in their drawings until 31 January, when a new theme for February will be announced. A selection of drawings will be displayed on the Bradford 2025 website each month and finally in an exhibition during Bradford 2025 in December.
Bradford 2025 will run drawing workshops for adults and children throughout the year, and involved in the project will be local, national and international artists, graphic designers, illustrators, animators, cartoonists – with a new theme and drawing revealed each month.
Shanaz Gulzar, Creative Director of Bradford 2025 UK City of Culture said:
“I am delighted to announce David Hockney as the first artist for DRAW! This nationwide project is a call out to the UK to join Bradford 2025 in exploring and celebrating our own creativity through the joy of drawing. Drawing is the first creative thing we learn to do, and I want people across the world – inspired by David Hockney – to rediscover this activity of expression. So pick up a pen, pencil, paintbrush, chalk, charcoal, use software, or a post-it note, just get involved and send us your sketches, doodles and works of art!”
Born and raised in Bradford, David Hockney has drawn the world around him for 60 years, using everything from pencils and now iPads, and even used newspapers and magazines to draw when paper was scarce during wartime. Hockney had a love of drawing from an early age and spent four years studying at the Bradford School of Art, which he joined in 1953 at the age of 16. The focus was on life drawing, but he went on to discover a love of painting and has often used the streets of post-war Bradford as a subject.
The ground floor of Salts Mill in Saltaire, Bradford is home to the 1853 Gallery, which houses one of the largest permanent collections of work by David Hockney and Cartwright Hall Art Gallery, Bradford showcases an unrivalled public collection of early work with a particular focus on Bradford and Yorkshire. A new temporary exhibition, David Hockney: Pieced Together, will also be on view at the newly renovated National Science and Media Museum from 15 January – 18 May, which will explore his early ‘joiner’ photocollages, one of which was made at the museum and shows the building as it was in 1985.
DRAW! Throughout 2025 bradford2025.co.uk/event/draw/
