DRAW (Drumchapel Arts Workshop) is a collective of artists and cultural workers that has been working for the past 16 years in Drumchapel, one of the most deprived districts of the city of Glasgow and of the UK as a whole.
Promoting different art-related activities, the initiative actively contributes to the recovery, remodelling and fitting out of the different spaces in order to hand them back to a community that lives in the midst of a scenario of serious unemployment, drugs, school absenteeism and health-related problems.
Through a programme of ongoing training and thanks to a highly flexible timetable that adapts to everyone’s availability, the activities promoted by the DRAW collective encourage the social inclusion of certain sectors of the community.
The project seeks to boost the visual arts and crafts in the district of Drumchapel and its environs through an informal workspace in which the participants can discover and develop their artistic potential. This methodology aims to improve access to education, training, jobs, self-confidence and the transfer of knowledge and the cultural development of the district in general.
Particularly noteworthy among the different projects pursued by DRAW are «Step Up», a project which works with numerous young mothers in the area offering them a variety of workshops on artistic techniques, and «Photographer Project», a photography workshop that documented the five generations of inhabitants of Drumchapel.
These activities and many others like workshops on design, decorating and mosaics staged by DRAW, are valuable examples of activities aimed at boosting social inclusion in a wide-ranging, diverse and
inter-generational community.