12 Reasons to Come to Drawing Club.

Well, THIRTEEN actually.

Okay so, full disclosure, I didn't write these but I REALLY wish I had. They come from a post (liked by nearly 15,000 people as I type) on Julianne Holland's IG account for her venture, The Aphrodite Art School in Queensland, Australia. Reasons she cites as motivating factors for everyday people to head to art classes (and not just send their kids) are:

1. Widespread digital saturation: prolonged screen exposure has increased demand for embodied, sensory experiences.
2. The rise of Al has re-contextualised human creativity: handmade and process-driven work is increasingly valued as distinctly human.
3. Social isolation is recognised as a structural issue: community art spaces function as accessible sites of social cohesion.
4. A shift from consumerism to experiential value: people are prioritising participatory experiences over material acquisition.
5. Art is reframed as a wellbeing practice: creative engagement is understood as regulation, reflection and presence.
   
6. Renewed emphasis on place-based community: local cultural institutions foster belonging and civic connection.
   
7. Parental demand for non-digital developmental spaces: creative learning supports emotional literacy, confidence and collaboration.
8. The re-legitimisation of play in adulthood: play is increasingly recognised as essential to learning and innovation. 
9. Creative spaces as psychologically safe environments. They support expression without performance pressure or evaluation.
10. Art as a stabilising practice in periods of uncertainty: making provides rhythm, agency and nervous system regulation.
11. Growing interest in skill-based, analogue learning: hands-on processes counter passive consumption culture.
12. Recognition of art's communal origins: historically, art has functioned as a collective and social act.

    
    

Skim through it again, focusing on the words in bold. Quite a list, isn't it?

Right now, 2 and 10 and 11 stand out as my motivators for running Drawing Club and for digging into my own artistic practices. 5 is always important.

Many of the people who attend DC regularly come for the play, for the community, to learn some skills, to try new things and take small risks.

Everyone attends for the kind of "self care" that truly matters, a gift they can give themselves which lasts and goes further than skin-deep.

To Julianne's list I would add something more personal and psychological but no less relevant to many, about sense of self:

Drawing Club can assist with re-integration of art-making and creativity to a person's identity. 

It's especially powerful if they were a child with talent who was told "artist" wasn't something they could "be" in this world. Or - and this torments so many people, I'm shocked - they were told they were bad at it and should stop.  Unbelievable. If that was you, I am sorry for your loss. Truly.

I don't throw the word "trauma" around much, but each of these situations is exactly that. Well-meaning adults can wound children without knowing it, trying in fact to protect them from the vagaries of the real world. But it's never too late to re-write that fateful scene in your biography, to show that "big person" they were full of shit and projecting all of it on to you. Or, more compassionately for all of us, to show that art will always support us, and that doesn't have to be in a material sense.

Making a living as an artist can be difficult and entail the sorts of compromise artists find difficult. They might feel like they're "selling out" or diluting their intention when money comes into the equation; they feel like money has the power to corrupt. As someone who makes art and has made money from it, there IS a tension between our particular, idiosyncratic pursuit of the new and unique on the one hand and meeting the market on the other. It's a juggle. It's a dance. It's an interesting human process in itself though - it comes down to a sense of agency. To see art as a service to others, and to go through the tricky process of putting a price tag on what we make helps us realise our worth and the worth of art as a whole.

If you don't consider yourself an artist (yet) there is a way to feel more aligned with your talents and interests, to feel like you're doing more than just a hobby. No shade on hobbies though - the distinction can sometimes be purely semantic or point you in the direction of unhelpful beliefs you can "unpack" about the value of your interests and preferences.

Because Drawing Club engages us in art-making in a social environment, we feel vulnerable as well as joyful. We can realise with a shock that we've brought more than our journal with us to the studio: there appears to be some childhood baggage too, in fact we begin to hear that EVERYONE has some. We relax. This can be where play comes in. A lack of control becomes our guide to letting go and engaging with the unknown.

Drawing Club exists for Julianne's 12 Reasons and so many more. Sign up to my mailing list to join the dedicated list and find YOUR reasons. 

xAB