Festival: The Big Draw 2010, various venues, until October 31 2010

The Big Draw, the annual carnival of creativity aiming to enrapture the public imagination through art, has announced a lively programme throughout October.

This year's activities take in historic inspiration from the British Museum, anatomical noodlings at London’s Hunterian Museum, Manga action at Wimbledon's Centre Court and a theatrical workshop informed by the genius of David Lynch at Battersea Arts Centre.

Run by The Campaign for Drawing, the hands-on family events will be held at hundreds of UK venues, including a weekend of free activities running alongside the River Thames for the Big Draw weekend on October 22, which takes a theme of Make Your Mark on the Future.

"Big Draw events are designed to break down the 'I can't draw' barrier," said Sue Grayson Ford, the Campaign for Drawing's Director.

"Our aim is to show that drawing is a vital tool for learning, observation, thought, creativity and communication."

Mayor of London Boris Johnson was on hand to chime in with a soundbite. "Drawing is not about being the best,” he hypothesised. "It's about putting across the way you feel, right there, in the moment. The world is your sketchbook and I hope everyone will be inspired to join in the Big Draw."

The Big Draw started as a one-day event in 2000, but could realistically expect to attract 300,000 participants a decade on.

The British Museum will base its contribution on the BBC Radio 4 series A History of the World in 100 objects, welcoming workshops by Harry Potter illustrator Cliff Wright and sessions on archaeological and digital drawing.

Tennis fans might be disappointed to realise that the Wimbledon event is taking place in the Centre Court Shopping Centre rather than on the hallowed nearby turf of the same name, but they'll have plenty of entertainment courtesy of MC, producer and artist Akira the Don, who'll be using "the very latest Manga software" to make a live comic strip inspired by shoppers' dreams for the future.

Several events are informed by iconic artists and designers – the National Gallery holds drop-in sessions creating large-scale landscapes replicating Turner and Constable, St John's Church on Bethnal Green will project drawings onto the walls John Soane built, and Battersea's Arts Centre concocts a "surreal fusion" of performance and drawing in The Drawing Theatre, which complements its David Lynch season.

Outside the capital, the Salisbury and South Wiltshire Museum uses pop music from across the decade to create a soundtrack for huge canvasses and "sketchbooks of sound", and Darlington Railway Museum marks the opening of its Lewis Carroll exhibition with a Mad Hatter's Tea Party and accompanying trilby making.

Art and Design experts from Glyndwr University will be leading multi-disciplinary workshops within Wrexham's Butcher's Market, and academics are also taking to the beach in Aberdeen to produce a 3D study using sand as their material of choice in a race against the tide.

Huddersfield Art Gallery blurs the boundaries of dance and drawing with a workshop to create solo and group movements and "a conversation between visual art and dance under the tutorship of choreographer Gerry Turvey.

Elsewhere a packed programme includes everything from masterclasses with Beano and Marvel comic cartoonists in Leicester to journeys through the hidden gardens of the Potteries Museum and Art Gallery in Stoke-on-Trent.
   
Visit the campaign's online search page to find an event near you.