Question, Wonder, Imagine: Experiencing the World through Visual Art Education

Art is, for me, the chance to open up to my feelings. It’s this beautiful chance to use our full selves and bring our full selves and who we are to what we make and how we respond to the situations we encounter. Visual Artist Jessica Houston

Question, Wonder, Imagine: Experiencing The World Through Visual Arts

Visual arts offer an opportunity to make sense of the world, to go within, sharpen our perception and unite both hemispheres of our brain. Participants in ArtistsInspire art workshops learn and apply tools and techniques that will help them to see, question, wonder and recall details, engaging in the entire art-making process from inception to completion.

All our Teaching Artists are vetted for their professional work and experience engaging children and youth in visual arts activities. Our current ELAN Artists in Visual arts include:

Adele Reeves, Andrée-Anne Laberge, Angela Marsh, Anna Jane McIntyre, Anne Lewis, Avy Loftus, Bettina Forget, Bronwen Moen, Claudia Salguero, Corie Waugh, Deirdre Potash of ArtWill Studio, Dorothy, Elaine Lassonde, Emmanuel Laflamme, Emily Read, Emily Rose Michaud, G Scott MacLeod, Heather Kushum, Iris Kiewiet, Jessica Houston, Jimmy Baptiste, Julie Pomerleau, Kate Battle, Kate Price, Laurence Dea Dionne, Lisa Kimberly Glickman, Marie-France Brassard, Maria Ezcurra, Melanie Garcia, Musée ambulant, PAAL Partageons le monde, Peter Gibson, Rebecca Soulis, Sabrina Bejba, Sharon B. Smith, Shelley Miller, Tamsin Horsfall, Teresa Dorey, Valerie Kimpton, Venus Lukic

What Does Visual Art Education Offer To Schools Today?

The benefits of art education to students are many. As [Teaching Artist] Anna Jane McIntyre says, Visual Arts aids:

… expression of complex emotions, connection to others through communal making and collaborating, problem solving, lateral thinking, working with what you have, learning from experience, encouraging novel paths of inquiry, developing resilience and grit, honing the intuition, developing dexterity and exploring what it is to be human [and] charting our differences and similarities across the ages.

Many ELAN Artists engage in Outdoor Art or Land Art. As [Teaching Artist] Marc Walter says, “When I approach any Land Art creation for a school, whether a sculpture or a space, I try to offer experiential learning based on inquiries, ideas and observations. It encourages the participants to be actively involved and to interact with Nature and the outdoors in a renewed fashion.” Through drawing, collage, painting, printmaking, sculpting and more, many of our Teaching Artists encourage students to work with materials that are easy to find through recycling/upcycling and in nature.

On a broader level, Visual Arts can help students understand how they fit and function in society. As [Teaching Artist] Jessica Houston says,

I passionately believe in what Art offers us in terms of being able to re-vision and re-imagine and collectively do so… This question of imagination is so fundamental to human existence, and our possibility for moving forward in the world together as we try to create a sustainable future, one filled with beauty and joy and acknowledging the difficulties that we encounter and being able to transform them.

Jessica’s enthusiasm for the transformational nature of Art is clear in Message in a Bottle, a sound and visual art workshop co-designed and facilitated by Jessica and Teaching Artists Louise Campbell and Guillaume Jabbour that encourages connection between participants even while learning at a distance by sharing observations of their surroundings over the platform Zoom.

[Teaching Artist] Emily Read’s project Stay Connected with the Grade 6 students of Carlyle Elementary School further affirms the transformational possibilities of art workshops. As Emily says, “Bringing teachers, students and artists together allows us to create unique and meaningful projects that would otherwise not be possible. These experiences connect, revive and inspire us!”

For more information, see:

Artist Profiles (select Visual Arts in the search engine)

School Grant guidelines and application