Ideas
This space is dedicated to sharing creative ideas for art workshops—whether you're planning your own session or just looking for inspiration. From simple projects to more involved techniques, you'll find a range of ideas to spark imagination and encourage hands-on making. Feel free to explore, adapt, and make them your own!
Cyanotype photography
In this workshop kids foraged their own plants and learnt about their properties, as well as learning the process behind cyanotype.
Tuning meditation
A mindful exercise for children to understand the experience behind meditation through breathwork and mantras.
Children are encouraged to explore slow and fast breathing, followed by voicing the vowels and feeling the movement in their belly.
They are encouraged to prolong the lenght of their breath with every vowel.
They are invited to try and copy someone else's sound, which throughout a lenght of time forms a melodic, playful experience shaped in unison, while understanding what sounds feel more comfortable to them.
Body painting
Children are invited to work in pairs in exploring personal boundaries through non-toxic body painting.
They are encouraged to communicate with their partner while working on their skin, asking for permission and mantaining a level of mutual understanding.
Once they have made their work, they are invited to narrate the story behind the character they have created and act the story to the group.
Shadow work
Children are invited to explore their surroundings, finding shapes through light and darkness.
They learnt about each other by tracing each other's body and colouring it in.
They are invited to create a background by using the same technique and tracing the shadow of natural elements in the outdoors, forming a collection of potraiture created collectively.
Fairy village
Participants were supported in sourcing natural elements, learning foraging skills and what elements are allowed to be collected.
Through painting and DIY work, as a group they recreated a fairy village by transforming their elements into tiny houses for the magical creatures of the forest.
Botanical bookmarks
Children were supported in foraging natural elements in their surroundings and learning about their properties.
They learnt how to build their own flower presser using sustainable materials that they found at home.
Through patiently waiting for their plants to dry out, they started decorating their paper bookmarks.
They used watercolours to paint and integrated salt within them to change the paint's reaction on the surface.
They made their own glue out of flower and water to stick the elements onto the paper and varnished it at completion.
Up-cycled dreamcatchers
Participants were invited to bring old clothes to the space, discarded fabric, wool, threads that they could find at home.
After supporting them in building their willow structure to construct upon, they were guided in creating concentric weaving around it.
The dreamcatchers became a starting point for conversations about their most adventurous or scary dreams.
Drawing sounds
Participants were introduced to mindfully listening to the sounds of nature and creating shapes/symbols to represent them.
They were encouraged to find rhythm, frequency, stability, pitch and speed within their lines and shapes.
Throughout this process they came out with vibrant, abstract artworks.
Mindful frames
Children were encouraged in creating their own frame, shaped and decorated as they liked, to mindfully observe the space around them.
They were prompted in looking for details in nature, textures, meeting points between different elements.
They were given a camera to try to capture what they saw, which invited them to walk slowly, take their time and be mindful while on a walk.
Memory stick
Workshops at Barry Hospital with older adults affected by Dementia through Tanyo Cymru.
This workshop reinforces their memories through playful questions asked by myself or the other participants.
By cutting out different shapes, they would direct the kind of question to ask, such as: a leaf would be to remember one of the most beautiful places they have seen, a bottle of wine would be a night to remember, a heart would be a person they hold dear.
The sticks were hung in the shared space or in their bedroom.
Up-cycled space junk
Kids a are encouraged to make art sustainably, re-creating rockets, planets, astronaut helmets using cardboard and paint.
Drawing a dance
Kids were guided in exploring mark making and giving meaning to their marks through symbolism, while thinking of how lines and shape might give a sense of direction, intensity and speed.
They were invited to pair up and take turns in observing the other person dance, while mark making the dance seen through their eyes
Descriptive zine
Kids are encouraged to draw descriptive words the group has chosen, such as "funny, wiggly" etc. by interpreting them through symbolism and mark making.