PALM BAY NEWSPAPER
What is the studio to Palm Bay?
The studio, now known as ‘The Art Cabin’ or titled by the children as ‘The Art Ship’ was originally used as a storage space for the school’s surplus furniture, and Art Specialist teacher Melanie Tong had a vision of the space becoming an art studio to local living artists to allow the children to have first hand experience seeing what a career as an artist looks like.
What are the aims?
TO CELEBRATE ART & to support local living artists with a studio space and in return giving the children skills they wouldn’t learn in art education unless they took art on at university level.
What do the kids do there?
The kids work alongside the artists in weekly workshops, taking on various projects using off-curriculum materials that the artists use in their practice. Each year the Young Arts Leaders learn new processes from the artists to take back into the school and teach their classmates. They have learnt printmaking, alternative photography, illustration, painting and sculpture skills that they would learn in secondary or higher education, as the artist believes that creativity should be celebrated early on due to the removal of art subjects in secondary education. The artists are setting the children up to be able to use art as a tool for coping with the stresses of moving into higher education.
Weekly Workshops With Mellissa
Mellissa Monsoon took the lead on teaching weekly workshops since 2018 and is passionate about teaching materials she uses, the first workshop was introducing Mellissa’s practice by exploring the collaboration of Art & Science. Mellissa brought in her microscope and taught the YALs (Young Artist Leaders) how to draw what they saw down a microscope. Mellissa enjoys involving the children in her line of enquiry as an artist and asking their feedback on what she is creating. Since lockdown 2020 Mellissa began a venture into ceramics with help from local Clay Space Bridget and now she runs weekly ceramics classes learning processes together with YALs.
