Launched in February 2008, The Centre for Drawing is a Research Centre of the University of the Arts London. It embraces drawing research in all subjects and disciplines associated to the disciplinary expertise of the University and beyond. The Centre for Drawing Arts London is hosted at Wimbledon College of Art where the Centre for Drawing, the first of its kind in the UK, was established in 2000.
The Centre has a primary focus on three distinct areas of investigation:
• Drawing and Literacy
• Drawing and Creativity
• Curriculum Development
It aims to provide a focus for research into the investigative and generative languages of drawing; the material procedures of drawing as a tool for the realisation of ideas; and the critical and conceptual apparatus of drawing.
Projects organised by the Centre address contemporary drawing in the context of its disciplinary diversity; operate and foster practice-led, pedagogic and theoretical research and enquiry into the subject; and bring together hitherto fragmented areas of drawing research through collaboration and actively disseminate through exhibitions, publications, conferences, colloquia, and the establishment of an archive collection (digital, slide, film, video, actual).
The Centre facilitates dialogue, debate and collaboration between a range of individual artists, designers and researchers and provides a forum for seminars, conferences, exhibitions and other means of dissemination that maximize the contribution to knowledge in the field through the sharing of individual practice/research and collaborative projects regionally, nationally and internationally. The Centre also provides specialist supervision for a cluster of research students.
The Centre is led by Professor Stephen Farthing, the Rootstein Hopkins Research Professor of Drawing University of the Arts London. The Centre has a coordinator with a demonstrable interest in drawing based at each of the six colleges.
