The aim was to engage the public in a creative way at a busy railway station. We wanted to celebrate Railway 200, the history of the buildings at Reading Station and Elsie Winterton a GWR railway engineer and draughtswoman, who became the first woman member of the UK’s Institution of Railway Signal Engineers in 1923.
We wanted to engage with all ages and with people who might not normally get involved with a creative activity. We hoped they might be drawn to the subject matter and technical drawing aspects of the event.
After a successful funding bid to Community Rail Network, we were able to plan the event and also recruit artist/facilitators for the events.
The project was intended to build collaborative links with Reading Museums partnership and the events were scheduled at the Museums as well as at the Station.
We also hoped to engage volunteers to help with the events during a busy half-term holiday and promote community rail activities at Reading Station.
In an empty shop unit in the Brunel Arcade artist/facilitator and volunteers and staff from SCRP and Reading Museums created a drop-in drawing workshop area and engaged visitors with drawing using inspiration provided by the museums and archive architectural drawings of Reading Station. We ran sessions from 10.30am to 12.30 and 1.30 pm to 3.30pm.
The drawing activities attracted a wide range of ages and everyone enjoyed engaging with the historical drawings and having a go at ‘technical drawing’ using the templates and stencils provided. In the morning we were also at a table on the transfer deck however people passing here were in a rush and reluctant to engage with the activities for very long. In the empty shop unit they were able to sit down and take their time. All the materials were provided by Reading Museums and people really enjoyed working on the large graph paper.
People so enjoyed engaging with the activities: drawing ‘technical drawings’ using the stencils on large graph paper with pencil. We also had a badgemaking machine and helped people make badges with representations of old GWR logos from the Museum and also the SCRP Blue Plaque for Elsie Winterton and other historical women on the North Downs Line. In both locations around 80 people engaged with the activities during the day.
The events which ran at the same time at Reading Museum were very successful, with over 150 people attending. On the following day there was a further event with drop-in drawing activities with an artist at The Museum of English Rural Life. Again, many people attended and were really drawn to the activity, spending quite some time on their drawings. It also attracted people that may not normally have been drawn to a creative activity who were very interested in trains, railways, and technical drawing.
I have always been really interested in railways and trains; I grew up near a heritage railway and can draw many of the engines from memory.
I really enjoyed the badgemaking and doing the drawing on graph paper. The graph paper made me really want to make drawings of the station buildings using the stencil.