WORKSHOPS

MIXED MEDIA MAKING

Why stick to one type of making or limit your imagination? We love mixing media and designing workshops that refuse to be labelled. At workshops for families and adults alike, we love sharing a range of inspiring playful prompts, ideas taken from artists or themes and providing lots of exciting materials and techniques to try! Whether that is card and paper, pens and stickers, different inks, natural materials, recycled junk to model with, images to collage with and fabrics and ribbons…You might decorate a flag, draw on a window or make a magical mask.

PRINTING & PRINTMAKING

Originary Arts runs printing workshop and printmaking workshops in Brighton and London. Whether you’d like to try linocut printing, block printing or learn other creative printmaking skills, our workshops always prove popular introductions. During our printmaking workshops we introduce the basics of printing, how to create your own designs, help inspire you with ideas and artists imagery or perhaps drawing from nature or different cultural influences, then take you step by step from idea to print. We have run popular printmaking events at venues including Uniqlo’s flagship store on Oxford Street, Dulwich Picture Gallery, The Book Club in Shoreditch and festivals. Printmaking for all ages can be run using natural materials such as leaves, as well as our workshops using styrofoam, found objects to print with, and vegetable printing (rediscover the joy of potato printing!)

FASHION ILLUSTRATION

Originary Arts has run fashion illustration workshops and costumed life drawing events during London Fashion Week. Celebrating and showcasing amazing designers, we share creative approaches to drawing fashion on the catwalk dynamically and developing your own style. We have run workshops at London College of Fashion, with the wonderful tutor Sue Dray, at Greenwich heritage museum sites, at the Wallace Collection as well as in shops, galleries and hotels.

Originary Arts design and run creative workshops for a wide variety of contexts and settings. Whether running weaving workshops for branding agencies, recycled art workshops in skips in East London school playgrounds or collage workshops with groups of artists who have experienced homelessness, we love creating workshops and coming up with ideas bespoke to the groups and communities we are invited to work with.

If you are looking for a creative workshop or arts participation activity in London, Brighton or beyond, do get in touch! From printmaking to painting, collage to nature-based crafts, textiles to drawing, we are always coming up with new activities and artistic inspiration to lead.

PAPER THEATRE

We have run our Paper Theatre workshops at Tate Lates, Royal Academy of Arts and in festival fields at Also and Wilderness. The joy of the Paper Theatre is that the designs and colours can be adapted to suit different artist exhibitions/themes or historical inspiration. At the Paper Theatre, participants are invited to create props, costumes, set designs and musical instruments for our players to wear and use in their theatrical posing! The key is that people can only use paper and card plus lots of imagination to create! An evolving collaborative artwork emerges across the event. Suitable for playful adults and children of all ages who can tear, cut, stick and shape with paper!

DRAWING

We believe that everyone can enjoy drawing given the right inspiration! We’ve been running drawing workshops of all shapes and sizes since 2009. Originary Arts runs drawing workshops including life drawing, figurative drawing, costumed drawing, fashion illustration, still life workshops and experimental drawing, sketchbook clubs and drawing summer schools. We’ve run workshops drawing the ravens at the Tower of London up close after dark, mermaid drawing on the Cutty Sark ship in Greenwich, neon UV garden of Eden experiences at RA, outdoor drawing at dawn in an East London cemetery…we love taking drawing everywhere and seeing people experiment and play with lines and mark making!

COLLAGE & ZINES

The creative possibilities of paper are endless! Originary Arts love inviting you to cut and paste, stick and snip with us! We’ll provide all of the inspirational imagery, stickers, magazines and tapes for you to get playing with and transforming into new unique designs. We have run lots of zine making workshops at DIY festivals and zine fairs, in schools and at gigs. We love running collage workshops too on different themes, recycling discarded paper and postcards that we collect into all sorts of images. We’ve yet to find someone who doesn’t find collage accessible and relaxing to do! Beware, this workshop can start an addictive new hobby…

ORAL HISTORY TRAINING & REMINISCENCE

Originary Arts’ Nikki Shaill has experience working in heritage, museums and oral histories. She can offer training in conducting oral histories, whether you’re interested in recording family and loved ones’ memories for personal use or to helping you to create archive-level recordings for heritage projects. Nikki has worked on several oral history interviews and running creative and scented reminiscence sessions with older people and different community groups to explore local stories. Interviews have also been used in podcasts and films that have been gathered. If you’ve got a project that you’d like Nikki to get involved in, get in touch.