Playeum’s plans for 2010

Playeum’s 2009 ended with the tremendous success of Singapore’s premier Big Draw event! The New Year has been hectic with planning for 2010. In response to children and families requesting for more engagements, we are working hard to pull off two series of events:

• A cultural event in April and May that welcomes children to explore screen, sound and stage; and
• The second series of Big Draw across multiple venues in October and November

In the meantime, we are actively seeking a permanent home for the museum. We will keep you posted of our plans. Please register your interest on Contact Us page.

The Big Draw 2009 ends with a big bang

The Big Draw finale at Jacob Ballas Children’s Garden was a most appropriate way to end the first Big Draw series in Singapore. The garden dedicated to children was a wonderful venue for our artists’ fiesta. Altogether there were eleven main activities and over 15 artists, performers and a team of yoga instructors. The park was filled to the brim the entire morning and with activity picking up again in the afternoon past 3. Over 1500 people attended the finale event which featured a series of community artwork with our Patron, Mr Sun Yu-li in the morning. The morning also saw families creating colourful webs under the canopy of frangipani trees, making mobile collages, building cities adorned with grafitti, drawing the caricature artist, and then there was music, yoga… the fun didn’t stop. There were families whose aim was to participate in every single activity, a tough task given that some found themselves spending over an hour at certain activities.

The afternoon was also chock full of fun with lots of drumming, weaving, sculpting, art jamming, all done to take drawing beyond paper and pencil. We thank all for making The Big Draw premiere in Singapore a BIG success. We’re looking forward to a brand new year ahead of more play in art, culture and nature!

An exhibition of The Big Draw 2009 series

Painting on large canvasses with our Patron, Mr Sun Yu-li (in black, with cap)

Playeum Interactives – Box City and Viewfinder, and creating mobile collages with Angie Seah

Drawing with webs with Tay Bee Aye

For more photos of the Big Draw series finale, please click here.

The Big Draw 2009 series finale

Excitement is building up towards The Big Draw Grand Finale on the 29th November, 2009, at the Jacob Ballas Children’s Garden. Here’s a sneak peak at our events for that day. Again, we’re pushing the boundaries of “drawing” and together with the Big Draw artists, we have come up with a menu of fun and whacky ways to draw!

Programme Snapshot

Throughout the day:

Featuring Finale The Big Draw exhibition, Playeum Interactives – Playeum’s own exhibits, performers and other festivities.

9am-12pm :

Draw with Mr Sun Yu-li
Move with Yoga Space
Make with Angie Seah
Knot with Tay Bee Aye
Cartoon with Kamal Dollah
Doodle with Kenny Chua

3pm-6pm :

Create with Centrestage
Sculpt with Nancy Pey
Draw with Rachel Jordan
Parent workshop with Create@centrestage

The Big Draw comes to the Library

The Big Draw at the library yesterday was a wild affair! With over a hundred families participating in the four-hour afternoon event, the study area on the fourth floor of the Woodlands Regional Library was packed to the brim at many points. As families scramble for table space and chairs, others were comfortably sitting on the floor drawing on the rolled out paper, or around the cardboard boxes.

The serenity of the library was preserved as all was orderly at the start, with families waiting patiently at the registration desk till 2pm when we let them into the space. Children listened intently to artist Biddy Low on her concept of Word Art, which plays with the shapes of letters and creates pictures around them. Others were watching artist Kenny Chua populate parts of the long paper with awesome characters. Children and families then picked up the markers, crayons and other materials to start their own drawings.

Kenny drawing his characters with the children

As more people streamed in, the area around the Playeum interactive exhibit, Box City, became more crowded, with energy building up very quickly. Children who first started to draw on the outside of the boxes, started putting the boxes on the sides, opened the flaps and some crawled into the boxes to draw on the insides. The bigger boxes (contributed by Santa Fe Movers) became little playhuts for the children, some stayed inside the boxes for long periods, drawing their own little worlds filled with aliens, robots, animals, trees, windows. The older children put the boxes on the sides, crawled in and laid down as they drew, Michaelangelo-like, on the “ceilings” of their little sanctuaries. As the boxes were getting filled with drawings, the kids (and mums) got more creative, they joined boxes together and soon there was a 5 metre long tunnel, then a limb grew out one side, and kids started their own tunnelling box city! I only wished I was tiny enough to explore the inside of their modern day caves, complete with cave paintings!

Crawling into the “Art Tunnel”

To view more photos of this event, please visit our Flikr slideshow.

 

As all the “tunnelling” work was going on, other families were filling up the sides of a large pillar with their Word Art, made on reused cardboard pieces, coloured paper and cards. Characters of different genres, from different planets and eras filled up two long stretches of paper.

Some of the Word Art works remain on exhibition at Woodlands Regional Library till November 25th. Come by and check it out if you get a chance, otherwise look out for the main exhibition of the 2009 Big Draw season in Singapore at our finale event on 29th November at Jacob Ballas Children’s Garden. This exhibition will include pieces from the three main Big Draw events at Jurong Point, Marina Barrage and Woodlands Regional Library, as well as from a satellite event at St. James’ Church Kindergarten to be held on November 14th (an event open only to registrants from St James which is led by one of the Big Draw artists, Rachel Jordan).

The event at Jacob Ballas Children’s Garden on 29th November, from 9am-6pm promises to be a full day of out-of-the-box activities. Come by to watch, draw, and play at the grand finale of the 2009 season of The Big Draw!

Water, water everywhere and lots of drops of colour

Another Big Draw event is over… and too quickly! This was a short event lasting 3 hours from 4pm to 7pm, but took advantage of the cooler late afternoon temperatures and the delicious views at dusk, from the setting sun as well as the beautiful coloured lights that illuminate the water features and the Marina Barrage structure after sundown.

With the sun shining brightly from behind a few non-threatening clouds, glorifying the panoramic view of the city skyline, the Flyer and the upcoming Marina Bay Sands across the Marina Bay, and sight and sounds of the amazing water fountains at the Marina Barrage, we were thrilled to start the event with plenty of inspiration, lots of drawing materials (from the good guys at Lyra!), and two wonderfully talented artists, Mike Foo (aka moof) and Rachel Jordan, leading the way.

This is also where Playeum unveiled one of our roving exhibits, the Viewfinder, a structure that holds clear panels up for children to draw all around the outside of the structure, as well as from the inside of the structure. The Viewfinder serves as a window that allows one to look through into the distance (or at the person standing in front or across from you!), and notice changes in a viewpoint simply by shifting one’s position. But of course, the children (and parents) were just as happy drawing anything they liked from the clouds, to their own rooms, to mountain ranges… all from their imagination.

Rachel Jordan, one of the two featured artists at Marina Barrage, had conceptualised “Circle Painting”, a community piece done with watercolour pencils and fingers dipped in water which will activate the brilliant colours of the pencils. Families were seen lounging out on their choice spots on the 12 metre by 8 metre drawing area, drawing circular patterns which evolved into faces, and animals and other wonderfully creative things. Pots of water were available for them to then dip their fingers in and trace the lines of the drawings they had made. The activity was somewhat relaxing and meditative for some, very novel for many.

The inspiring “Circular” horizon:

At the same time, Mike Foo or moof, an illustrator of wonderfully charming child-like characters was working just steps away, on a 6 metre wide canvas hung on the wall. Almost immediately upon seeing the first forms of Mike’s character appear, children were picking up crayons and starting to draw with him.

The theme for the Marina Barrage event was “Water water everywhere, lots of drops of colour”, and lots of colour there surely was! The area around the Viewfinder was busy with children getting decked out in old shirts, and dipping brushes in the blue, red and yellow acrylic paint in the paint pots, while the circle painting activity saw colours sprouting out like blossoming flowers off the ground. And on the walls, there was just that, plenty of colour on paper and canvas on the otherwise bare, concrete walls. As the rain clouds started to move in towards us, the activity in the shaded area where we were occupying picked up as families came from the rooftop garden to take cover. Even as the rain poured, the families continued drawing and enjoying the cool breezes that the showers brought.

We were glad to see some familiar faces from the first Big Draw event at Jurong Point come participate here… we are gaining a following! Also back to help out were researchers from National Institute of Education, and we were also supported by the very resourceful students from School of Arts, Design and Media at Nanyang Technological University, Nanyang Academy of Fine Arts and an educator from Association of Early Childhood Educators Singapore. A very big thank you to you all!

As we fought the strong winds while clearing up after the event, we were already looking forward and thinking ahead to the next Big Draw event at Woodlands Regional Library next Saturday… and the surprises that will hold… to be unveiled then…

To view our slideshow of pictures at Marina Barrage, please CLICK HERE.

A beautiful sunset on the “Viewfinder – an exhibit developed by Playeum“

Launch of The Big Draw in Singapore by Playeum a big success!

What an adrenaline rush! We’ve been on our feet all day, as have all our volunteers and artists, but it has been exhilarating from start to end with the streams of people coming through but slowing down to make their mark on our rolls of paper, canvas, batik and life size cut outs of children and grown ups!

The event started out with a bang with about 200 kids and grown ups showing up right at noon, eager to start drawing and playing! We had to immediately activate our back up plan of rolling out additional paper at an area we’d held in reserve. Groups of 30s, 40s and 60s started populating the various stations and activity areas.

The atmosphere was charged up prior to the Mayor of South West District’s arrival, with the explosive rhythms of Bloco Singapura’s drumming as people continued to draw, and other onlookers stopped to join the crowds.

In the main atrium area, Tay Bee Aye worked with groups of the families to draw in and decorate life size cutouts to be installed right away. The participants used oil pastels to draw, cut up fabric and old magazines to make life size people in all shapes, sizes and colours, even figures of a pregnant woman and some with padded bikinis! At the stage area, Kenny Chua was drawing together with the children on the canvas laid out on the stage floor, and the floor in front of the stage.

Kamal Dollah and his gang of two other batik artists, Sujak Rahman and Dino Hafian laid out the 7 metre-long batik that was set up across 3 long tables. The scale of the work was impressive, even in the open entrance walkway with a high pitched roof. The batik proved to be very popular with everyone and was packed almost the whole 5 hours!

Throughout the afternoon, families and groups came, made their marks and left. Some families stayed as long as the whole 5 hours, in particular a little 18-month old girl, accompanied by her mother, was one of the most prolific artists at the event! She’d started at noon and worked all afternoon till almost 5! No nap needed!

The event ended officially at 5pm, but there were groups that were very engrossed in their drawing and artwork, the clearing of the stations only took place at almost 6pm.

We’re now holding our breaths till the next event lined up in The Big Draw series at Marina Barrage on October 31st. See you all there, from 4-7pm! For details of the other Big Draw events by Playeum in the next 7 weeks, click here.

The Bloco Singapura drumming up the crowds and providing an almost hypnotic rhythm to the drawing activities.

Batik artist Kamal Dollah working on the second layer of wax after the first layer was quickly filled in by the participants.

Members of the South West Community Development Council making their contribution to the community batik.

All members of the families were fully engaged in the the making of the batik.

Half way through the event, the railings at the atrium were starting to fill up with drawn in life-size figures with some very creative designs by the families!

For more photos, please visit our slideshow at http://www.flickr.com/photos/playeum/show/

Copyright © 2009 Explorer Asia Holdings Pte Ltd. All rights reserved.

A sneak peak into The Big Draw

We are now just less than 2 days away from the launch of The Big Draw in Singapore, the Campaign for Drawing, which will stretch over 7 weeks from October 10th to November 29th across 4 locations in Singapore.

It is 8:07pm on Thursday October 8th, 2009 and Kenny Chua has started to give a sneak peak to passersby of what’s to come on Saturday. Kenny is one of the artists working on the launch of The Big Draw here. Work has started on the backdrop for the stage for the opening event, and will be completed on Saturday with the Mayor of the Southwest District and some very special guests. Other “big” drawing opportunities await anyone willing to let go of their fear of putting the pencil/crayon/oil pastel/paintbrush to paper (and other unconventional media)!

The first mark made at Jurong Point, 2 days before the opening of the event. Some people walking by thought they were watching vandalism in action until they got quite caught up in the amazing strokes of Kenny’s marker!

Copyright © 2009 Explorer Asia Holdings Pte Ltd. All rights reserved.

The Big Draw

Copyright © 2009 Explorer Asia Holdings Pte Ltd. All rights reserved.