PROFESSIONAL PRACTICE - Workshops and skill sharing

An example of a local art workshop is 'Cyrilyn Silver' run by an artist who shares her silversmithing skills in sessions where you can make your own rings for £55. Members of my family have completed this workshop and were very happy with their creations, especially since having had no previous experience with the skill. The jewellery also feels so much more special and unique when you have made it yourself so workshops like this are a really fulfilling activity.


In my own experience, I have done one to one as well as group skill sharing with young children. For a birthday party activity we made deco-patch elephants, which involves collaging tissue papers onto a 3D card shape:


I found it important to give them straight forward guidance on the step by step process, but not try and control their creativity- this way each child came up with a unique elephant with the colours and patterns they like most in what ever arrangement they wanted. It was also important to break it up into short intervals due to their attention spans not being very long at that age. I think doing something that would take too much time would quickly become boring for the children and they would get distracted wanting to do something else, which is why I chose this activity. They were all happy with the outcome and each had something special to take home and place in their rooms or around the house.
Overall I feel that skill-sharing is something I could do if I had the opportunity to make some money but I don't really enjoy it that much, I think it is better suited to people with more outgoing personalities who have a lot of social energy, so I prefer taking part in workshops  rather than teaching them.





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