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| Assorted books made by members of Myriad Studio group |
One of the things I enjoy about running workshops is the challenge of adapting what I'm teaching to suit my audience. Back in November I got to run my Inventive Sketchbooks workshop twice in one week but for two quite different audiences. The first one was for Myriad Studio art group, led by artist Katarina Prior and based at Eden Arts in Penrith and the second was at Carlisle Youth Zone for the Junior club (ages 7-12.) Two quite different audiences...
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| Looking at samples |
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| Choosing papers |
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| Choosing papers |
The Myriad Studio session was a lot of fun but also really quite relaxed. Everyone was an adult and had come not just to learn something but for the social and therapeutic benefits of art making too. There were also a few people I knew who'd been on some of my other workshops which was lovely. It was a very friendly group and I was able to run the session in a very laid back, informal way, taking people through the process step by step and helping when needed but mostly just chatting! It's lovely working with groups like this, it hardly feels like work at all and I often get to have a bit of a play myself.
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| Creative chaos! |
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| Creative chaos! |
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| Creative chaos! |
In contrast the session at the Youth Zone was what you might call action packed! I really enjoyed it, it was a lot of fun and I was lucky to have some fantastic staff supporting me but I was also very tired at the end of the session. We were busy all evening, the workshop was run on a drop in basis and we had so many children come and join in which was really good. There's often an interesting dynamic with workshops with energy going back and forth between leaders and participants; for this session it was high energy the whole evening and so by the end of the night I was ready to drop.
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| Finished books... |
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| Finished books... |
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| Finished books... |
It's very different working with adults and children and I get a lot out of working with both groups, I like the differences and adapting what I'm doing and how I approach things for each different groups. One of the things that I love about working with people in general is being able to light that creative spark; whether it's showing someone who's already very competent a new way of doing something and sending them on new creative path or seeing a child genuinely proud of what they've been able to create with me. Sometimes I look at my schedule and think I must be insane but other times I look at what I actually do in that crazy schedule and realisle how much I love it how lucky I am to be able to do this.
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