Following its success in 2023, Keighley Creative and Naseem Darbey took The MEGA Drawing Box on its first tour in the summer of 2025 to The Beacon in Cliffe Castle Park as part of Bradford 2025, UK City of Culture. During one epic day of activity, we welcomed nearly 600 visitors to go green and make their mark inspired by nature connectedness at The MEGA Drawing Box in the Park. 

We collaborated with you, our communities through social media to create a nature inspired playlist to inspire visitors to make marks alongside the sound. We partnered with Get Out More CIC who created an ‘inspiration station’ of natural objects to teach participants to observe their surroundings and to influence their mark-making and took visitors on wellbeing walks in the park. The tool-making station returned and saw visitors make GIANT drawing tools from recycled materials to create a collaborative nature-scape. 

As the night drew in, we turned the MEGA Drawing Box into a Disco Drawing Box in partnership with Bradford Cultural Voice Forum for their Creative Summer Social Art in the Park. Artists and creatives from across Bradford District made their mark and contributed to the communal plant-scape that had been created throughout the day.

We are proud to have been able to offer 16 paid opportunities for local artists and creatives to create murals, support the event, engage visitors, create a wonderful film and design the event. With support from Bradford Cultural Voice Forum, we commissioned seven artists to create murals inspired by the theme of nature on the outside of the box that came to life throughout the event. They were inspired by birds, bugs, the local landscape, folklore and the climate crisis.  

We would like to say a huge Thank You to all the people who made it possible: the lead artist and co-founder of the Drawing Box Project, Naseem Darbey, our creative facilitators Claire O’Brien, Esther Abramson, Jess Shaw, Otto Best and Sharon Ashton our commissioned artists, Rebecca Buchanan, Laura Alice, Ella Nicholson, Leonie Briggs, Michael Duckett, John Giles and Sean Jukes AKA Rambling, our fabrication team Steve Bishop and Jon Britten, Bradford Cultural Voice Forum and Get out More CIC, The Beacon Team, Bradford 2025 and Danny Hardaker for this beautiful film that captures the event perfectly! 

This project was funded and made possible by BD Festival Fund.