The Royal Drawing School is an independent, not-for-profit resource that aims to raise the standard and profile of drawing through teaching and practice. The school was founded in 2000 by His Royal Highness The Prince of Wales and artist Catherine Goodman. It was first known as The Prince’s Drawing School but was given the Royal seal of approval in 2014.
Tuition, resources, and opportunities are offered not just to art students and artists, but also children and adults of all ages and abilities. The motivation behind this is in part to highlight the ability of drawing to help us see the world more clearly and to instigate innovation and true creativity. Goodman is the school’s artistic director and has learnt the importance of drawing from her own career as an artist. “My work is semi-abstract, figurative paintings, but I work from drawings,” she explains. “Drawing from life and using those drawings to inform my work in the studio has always been an important part of my practice.”
Here she explains the reasons behind setting up The Royal Drawing School nearly 20 years ago and how HRH The Prince of Wales’ continued support has allowed the institution to take its teachings beyond the classroom walls.
The Foundation Year at Royal Drawing School Trinity Buoy Wharf (From the collection of Royal Drawing School)
What led you to setting up the Royal Drawing School with His Royal Highness The Prince of Wales in 2000?
Art school and university education around that time seemed to be phasing out drawing as part of the normal practice for fine art students. I'd been teaching at Camberwell where I was a student before and there was very little drawing teaching. I'd had an excellent drawing teacher when I'd been there, so I realised there was going to be a need for it from various art students who are still interested in exploring the language of drawing from life.
I had been teaching drawing for His Royal Highness at the Institute of Architecture, which he’d founded in the 90s. As that was being phased out, we bought a new building in Shoreditch and I asked him if we could start a drawing studio – it didn't even start out as a school initially – and he agreed.
What did it initially set out to be? And how has the school developed over the last 18 years?
Very simply it started out to be a sort of teaching resource mainly for art students in London who weren't able to access good life drawing teaching or drawing on the streets of London. So we started out with quite a small program, for about 40 students. That grew very quickly and I realised that there was a huge need for it both among art students but also the public as a whole, particularly because of where we were based in Shoreditch, which was beginning to be a creative hub in the city. There were a lot of young creatives round there who wanted to draw.
Soon after, we decided that we would start working with children. When David Hockney came to the school, he suggested that we started younger than we were already pitching our teaching at. So we started running programs for state school children around the boroughs of London aged 10–14 years old. Eventually we started a post-graduate course called the Drawing Year and a foundation course, so by this time we were really functioning like any normal university but we weren't running a BA program. We've never done that because we felt it was healthier for students who'd done our foundation course to go out to university somewhere else and then perhaps come back and do the postgrad course if they wanted.