Angels of Hope, York, 2025

https://newvisuality.wordpress.com/

T R A & S ANGEL

CREATIVITY IN YORK “There’s a lot of bad news at the moment, a lot of apathy.

Angels in art can be an antidote to that.” Greg McGee, charity director

Aiming for the skies with York’s Local Cultural Education Partnership: in 2025, it's all about the Angels

CITY O MEDIA F ARTS

CREATIVITY APPEARS WHEN ANGELS ARE NEAR Draw with Denmark started during the Covid pandemic in 2021 and moved from a Danish charity event to a UNESCO Global campaign focused around creative and positive messages of hope.

Draw with Denmark has involved children and young people in 45 countries and in cities from all continents across the world, and has released a very special magic along with thousands of drawings. The programme has caught the imagination and featured on BBC News and BBC Look North. There have been exhibitions, involving drawings by children in York schools, at the National Gallery in Copenhagen, and at the UNESCO Creative Cities’ Annual Conference in Braga, Portugal and in Cali, at the UNESCO Conference in Paris, and in Wuhan, in China and in York.

From 2025 the focus for ‘Draw with Demark’ will be ‘Angels of Hope’ and REACH (York's Cultural Education Partnership) now invites children and young people in York to take part in this global drawing campaign!

Children and young people are being asked to create drawings of Angels that will send messages of hope around the world. There are 20 drawing challenges and children can take part by creating a drawing, collage, painting, or animation (e.g. GIF) analogically or digitally. To further develop the initiative, this year we are encouraging schools to ask children to accompany the drawings by stories or poems.

The Danish campaign is running from now until the 15th October 2025 and York schools can send their drawings to us by half term in the Autumn term.

We hope you decide to encourage some of your children and young people to join the ‘Angels of Hope’ campaign so that we can help send messages of hope around the world.

Greg McGee, Director, New Visuality

WORKING WITH THE YOUNG ARTISTS OF YORK

The Danish campaign is running from now until the 15th October 2025 and York schools can send their drawings to us by half term in the Autumn term. We hope you decide to encourage some of your children and young people to join the ‘Angels of Hope’ initiative so that we can help send messages of hope around the world.

We spent the Easter Holidays circulating around York, working with over 50 young people from OLQM, Millthorpe, Archbishop Holgate’s, All Saints, Westfield Primary, Steiner School, York High, Joseph Rowntrees, Bootham School, and more.

www .new visua lity.w ordp ress. com

Angels of Hope, 2025

ANGELS OF YORK DISCUSSING ASPIRATIONS AND OPTIMISM Angels mean a lot of things to a lot of people. The last thing we want to do is reduce such a fertil concept into one meaning. Our teenage advocates are taught to unpack ideas with sensitivity and encouragement.

ANGELS

BLUEBERRY ACADEMY

‘What raises YOU up?’

In April 2025 brought 'Angels of Hope' to Blueberry Academy who provide specialist support for young people and adults with learning differences, autism, social, emotional and mental health needs and/or other disabilities. As part of their Citizenship and Wellbeing outreach we focused on this question: 'what raises YOU up?' By working on a communal set of angel wings in collaboration with the Lord Mayor York we learned a lot about ourselves and what we're reaching for, not only for ourselves but as a community and as a city.

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Focusing on York's 'City of Sanctuary' status, the Lord Mayor of York Margaret Wells focused on the welcome we can offer to refugees as something worth aspiring to. "At a time when we need more tolerance and understanding, in York we are lucky to have places like Blueberry Academy and charities like Refugee Action York, leading the way, giving us hope and making our City an even better and more friendlier place, not just for those seeking sanctuary but for us all." As far as imagining angels goes, a welcome for a tired traveller is ALWAYS a good one.

Contact Greg McGee (greg@accordingtomcgee.com) to discuss how we can get your group involved: so far we have had Manga illustrations, photography, and communal designs of feathers and wings.

All art will be exhibited digitally internationally.

We’re open to ideas!