Royal Academy of Arts, London, 26 July 2025

31 Jul 2025

‘attRAct‘ is a year-long series of free, artist-led creative workshops run by the Royal Academy of Arts for people aged 15 to 19. The 2025 attRAct cohort gathered for its first session in late January and has continued experiencing diverse artistic practices throughout subsequent months.

In February this included a ‘Drop-in and Draw’ workshop led by London Drawing, at which four male models formed a tableau inspired by works of Renaissance masters. No fewer than 285 young people attended that one. Fast-forward to July, this time for an all-day session with London Drawing offering intensive life drawing tuition.

It being a Saturday daytime commitment in the middle of summer, 10am to 4pm, with more emphasis on focus than fun, participant numbers were closer to 40. Within this, however, was a core that genuinely wanted to learn. Anne Noble-Partridge and Josie Deighton of London Drawing were there to teach; Lidia and I were there to pose.

Our venue was the huge Benjamin West Lecture Theatre, which first opened in 2018. As attendees could be as young as 15 years-old, models had to remain in underwear. It seemed highly unlikely that any young people present would be phased by the idea of nude figures in an art room, so I guess this was just a sop for tabloids and trolls.

We opened with a flurry of quick poses and thereafter probably averaged around the 8-minute mark for each study, interspersed with demonstration poses of 2-3 minutes. Anne, meanwhile, covered basic observation, measuring with a stick, foreshortening, continuous line, using the weaker hand or both hands, negative space, and so on.

Having initiated an exercise, Anne and Josie would then walk along the rows of seats to offer one-on-one guidance, advice, feedback and encouragement. The variety and pace of activities plus breaks were such that I never felt time was dragging. Hopefully our students thought likewise. We ended with a 20-minute pose for freestyle drawing.

So many positives in this day. Aside from the cachet of a prestige venue, there was a chance to catch-up with Lidia – it had been years! – and to witness Anne and Josie in full flight. Best, however, was getting a feeling of both artistic and human appreciation from the young people themselves. A talented bunch; I wish them bright futures. 🙂