A speech by HRH The Prince of Wales at The Prince’s Drawing School, Shoreditch

Ladies and Gentlemen, it has been an enormous pleasure to have this brief opportunity to look at the End of the Year show. If I had a chance I’d be here much more often, I promise you.

Having caught sight of one or two of you during the year, either at Windsor or even at the Castle of Mey in the garden, it’s a particular joy for me to have this opportunity to see what you’ve been doing. Looking round I’ve been intrigued to see where the blue dots have gone, and to see if my feeling about each drawing has coincided with the selectors!

But whatever the case, what is marvellous is after ten years we are building up a very interesting collection of the work of students like yourselves and, in due course, that collection, I think, will be really of immense value in the future. This is why the work here is of such great importance, and why I am so proud of what Catherine in particular has achieved. And in fact it goes back much further than ten years, I hate to say it’s now over 20 years - how she’s put up with me for over 20 years I don’t know - when I met her she was a young student and had only just started at Camberwell.

But, of course, the Drawing School here has grown out of the drawing element of my original Institute of Architecture, which Catherine helped to get going, because of the importance of drawing and observation and the understanding of the human form and proportion, which is so crucial I think to understanding the way we should interpret and build the built environment in relation to us as human beings.

I am completely indebted to Catherine, and also hugely grateful to Duncan Robinson for giving up so much precious time when he is so busy at Cambridge.

So I am so grateful, thank you.