We had a great time at the Narembeen Street Art Workshop! The weather was perfect, great turn out, and some really excellent designs. This was our first workshop split a week apart instead of back to back. The first day we created concept art, and made templates out of cardboard. The second day we went out to the skate park and painted on the equipment, and made portfolios comprised of our designs and photos of the artwork.

Workshop Recap

Number of registrations: 11/10

Number of actual attendees: 10/10

Best Part:  The conversations with the kids were fantastic, and there was so much enthusiasm. My favorite part was after suggesting they remove “bad” from their vocabulary (“I’m bad at art” or “this looks bad”) and replacing it with “I need more practice” or “I don’t like how these lines look”, it sunk in and they altered their descriptions.

Worst Part: This was the least structured workshop we’ve had. Part of that was because it was a kids workshop, and part of it was the utter chaos of running 3 workshops simultaneously and losing a team member and the unexpected fly balls that personal life can throw. On paper, we hit our targets and everyone seemed to enjoy the workshop and things went smoothly overall, but I felt like I went into this workshop less prepared than the others.

Most interesting fact I learned: This might seem obvious, but we talked about natural materials vs synthetic materials, and I learned that acrylic paint is made up of plastic particles. Using acrylic paints isn’t great for the environment, so reusing and correctly disposing of paint cannisters is really important.

What to do again next time: The Narembeen CRC was absolutely fabulous in getting the word out about this workshop. I’ve been really reliant on my Community Resource Centres, they’re just the hub of information in all of these small towns, and incredible valuable. If you live in a town with a CRC, I encourage you just to go in and say hi and ask them what they do!

What not to do next time: Underestimate materials – we were low on cardboard and exacto-knives. It slowed down the process and there was a lot of down time waiting for a free knife. Next time I would have sourced more exactos and contacted the local IGA for donating more cardboard.