Art Teachers Connect Community Day
Saturday 14 June 2025
11am-6.30pm
The Paul Mellon Centre, 16 Bedford Square, London, WC1B 3JA
This summer we are very excited to be running a Community Day at the Paul Mellon Centre (PMC) in London. In the style of the residential programme, across the day there will be a series of workshops delivered by members of our community who have completed their Postgraduate Certificates in ‘Developing Teachers’ Research and Practice’. This is a fantastic opportunity to hear about the creative, dynamic research they have been conducting in their classrooms, and think about how you could bring it back to your classroom too! You can find details of these workshops below. The day has been scheduled to ensure you get to take part in every workshop.
This will also be a moment to reconnect with community members you attended the residential with and make new connections within our wider network. This opportunity is open to all members of the Art Teachers Connect community and completely free. The PMC will provide financial support for travel and accommodation to those who need it – recognising many of you will be coming from far afield. Please get in touch if you have any questions or requests regarding how we can make the day more accessible and comfortable for you.
Spaces are limited and offered on a first come, first served basis. Please email [email protected] if you would like to attend.
Workshops
“Miss, what if there were no real rules?”
“Miss, do you think the Art room could be its own Religion?”
“Miss, are we allowed to change our names in here?”
Share and respond together to the wonderful questions we experience in our education settings, jumping into the ‘middle’ of an activity for you to take away and continue with your own creative tribes.
Lolly Stewart Thomas is the Head of Art and Design, Design and Technology at St Benedicts catholic college- Colchester. Lolly has been teaching for over 18 years in a variety of settings in the midlands and south of England. She studied printmaking as an undergraduate before teaching and has an MA form Goldsmiths (Artists teachers and contemporary practise- specialising in ‘contested spaces’) Most recently, Lolly obtained a PGCert, teacher research and practise with the fabulous Leeds university! She is passionate about collaborative Art, including the spaces we use to house ourselves and our students creativity- Lolly’s focus recently in research and practise has been about the safe space of the art room; what that means to us as educators and the young people who seek out the solace of the unique spaces we hold for them, creatively and emotionally.
Explore the findings of Nicola’s research into visual literary through practical exercises explored in both primary and secondary classrooms. You can then take these exercises back to school with you!
Nicola McCaffrey is an art specialist teacher in a primary school in South London. Nicola has taught for 14 years, and is early years trained, with an MA in Art and Design in Education from UCL, and more importantly a PGCert from Leeds in Teachers Research and Practice!
Printing is a great technique to support students become comfortable with making mistakes, build resilience and boost self-esteem. Explore how this technique can be used in classrooms to create primary observations, develop ideas and experiment.
Lucy Williams is a Senior Mental Health Lead & experienced Art teacher. She is an advocate for the arts, creativity and play and dedicated to making a positive impact through artistic expression. Lucy was awarded the Jane Featherstone Fellowship to complete her Post Grad in Teacher Research and Practice at University of Leeds. She is interested in the power of art as a transformative tool in education and community building and champions the intersection between creativity, play and health.
Have a go at writing your own haiku – a short form poem originating in Japan – in response to artworks displayed at the Paul Mellon Centre. This workshop will invite you to respond creatively to artworks, and think about the connection between art and writing, whilst
providing you with ideas and resources to make writing about art less daunting for your students.
Esme Boggis is the Learning Coordinator at the Paul Mellon Centre where she coordinates and delivers the centre’s learning programme which includes Write on Art – an art writing programme for young people ran by Art UK and the PMC. In 2022, she completed a PGCE in Further Education Art and Design and an MA in Writing at the Royal College of Art in 2020. She also holds an undergraduate degree in Art and Visual Culture from the University of the West of England.
Create a temporary autonomous zone where the rules don’t exist and you can embrace your inner child and play. Get to see your environment in a new way!
Claire is a middle school art teacher committed to encouraging children to see themselves as artists and explore what being an artist is like.
In the workshop we will be exploring the power of collaboration through the workshop model. We will be making a colourful interconnected piece that we then slice up and share out, everyone will end up with their own piece of our collective artwork to wear home.
Sue Gibbons is the Curriculum Leader for art at Malmesbury School in Wiltshire, a fully comprehensive school within the Athelstan Academy Trust. As well as teaching and leading art departments her work as an artist and an active researcher drives new educational approaches in the classroom. Recent research is brought together in her article on the power of the workshop model in the winter edition of the National Society for Education in Art and Design AD magazine.