We, Basia Zielinska and Julia Sawicki , Co-Founders of Art Box Workshops have recently been reflecting on the importance of our involvement in our local community. What a great way to meet our local community, through our creative services.
We started up Art Box Workshops 7 years ago. Both of us were practicing artists at this time and we loved creating works for exhibitions and for commission. The life change of Julia expecting a baby sparked the inspiration to create Art box Workshops studio, a space to share our passion for art to our local community.
Basia and I have worked together over the years, as a team, utilizing our individual skills to make Art Box Workshops a wonderful, creative, learning environment. Art Box Workshops has been a success because of the ongoing support from our local community. Our local community has been an important part of our creative growth over the years. In supporting us by sending their children to us for art classes has been a major factor in encouraging us to keep going from strength to strength. We very much appreciate this community support.
We work with parents, facilitating school holiday workshops along similar hours to a school day. We also personally collect many of our students, after school, from our local Primary school, a five minute walk away from the studio, allowing peace of mind to the busy working parents, who know their child is safely taken care of. The children have some “Chill time” where they can relax, enjoy a healthy afternoon tea and catch up with friends before the lessons begin.
We are constantly tweaking our three year curriculum built across two sets of age groups, the first three years of primary school and the last three years of primary school, no lesson is actually repeated during a child’s six years of art classes or workshops at Art box Workshops. We offer after school art classes that align with the opportunity of entering works into local community art completions such as the Young Archie portrait prize (now open for entries click here for details) and the Australian threatened species art competition.
The essence of what makes Art box Workshops studio unique is that we have created a lovely “Homey” atmosphere for the children. Our studio is located in the garden of my mum Basia’s family home. We have the studio space, a beautiful garden with table and chairs for all meal breaks and of course, the home itself, a refuge on wet weather days. It truly is a home from home. Parents love this place too. So many are working parents and they can see the children are safe, cared for and that they are having great fun creating art.
In a community situation there is a lot of give and take. Basia and I run regular free (we provide all materials and our time) workshops, organized by our local North Sydney Council, which are attended by young children and their parents. We donate artworks for fundraisers run by the children’s schools and our local “Street Library” on Yeo Street Neutral Bay was painted by us. We encourage our students to attend exhibitions at local galleries and to participate in local community art competitions and exhibitions.
Click here for Art Box Workshops term time art classes.
Click here for Art Box Workshops school holiday program.
Our local North Sydney Council has done tremendous work over the years for our local creative arts community. It has been an honor for Art Box Workshops to be part of a number of local community exhibitions and festivals, such as “Children’s week”, for more information on arts and culture in our local community please take a look at this link www.Northsydney.nsw.gov/artsnadculture.
We look forward to being part of our local community by continuing to provide after school Art Club, school holiday workshops and we are exploring the possibility of some weekend art classes for adults.
Creatively yours
Basia and Julia
