Build confidence and skills in primary visual arts through a hands-on day of making, creating, and learning.

K–6 teachers will be guided by educational professionals from both the AGNSW and The Arts Unit as they explore current exhibitions and discover creative ways to program visual arts experiences in their classrooms.

Bush Studio: primary visual arts camp provides an opportunity for public school students in Years 5 and 6 to be involved in an engaging, challenging and stimulating visual arts program led by experienced visual arts teachers.

The camp aims to provide students with an opportunity to observe, interpret and respond to their immediate environment, the Hawkesbury River and surrounding forests. Students will discover strategies to explore their immediate experience of the landscape to create preliminary works that are process-focused as departure points for resolved studio-based artworks. Students will investigate ways to create sculptural works using natural found objects and use these sculptures to facilitate the making of drawings and monoprints. The program will culminate in an exhibition for families, friends and teachers on the final day of the camp.

Bush Studio: Primary visual arts professional learning workshop provides educators an opportunity to develop skills and strategies for teaching visual arts activities with their students. Participants will learn strategies to explore their immediate experience of the unique urban bushland setting of the Field of Mars Reserve. With guidance from artist educators, they will experiment with a range of mediums to make engaging and interesting preliminary works across a variety of mediums, including drawing, textiles and printing.

Bush Studio: Secondary visual arts professional learning is a practical visual arts workshop for secondary visual arts teachers, including those who teach related VET,  content endorsed, board endorsed and life skills courses. Participants are given the opportunity to refine their skills and expertise in specific art forms as they work alongside carefully selected artists to observe, interpret and respond to their immediate environment at Ku-ring-gai National Park, Bobbin Head. Teachers will receive detailed handouts, including activity suggestions and supply lists, that they can take back to their classrooms, integrating new artmaking techniques into future teaching programs.

Bush Studio: master class is a visual arts camp for students in Year 11, especially those studying Visual Arts, including related VET, content endorsed, board endorsed and life skills courses. Students are given the opportunity to refine their skills in specific expressive forms as they work alongside carefully selected artists to observe, interpret and respond to their immediate environment at Ku-ring-gai National Park, Bobbin Head.

Dedicated students are invited to work alongside artists Emily Besser and Hayley West to discover the intersection of painting, drawing and ceramics through dialogue between materials and artists' processes.  Experiment with numerous painting and drawing mediums in order to overcome preconceptions of their scope. Create dramatic juxtapositions through varied scale, density of brushstrokes and pigment, colour and texture as you harness the possibilities of paper as a surface. Refine hand-building techniques with clay and explore surface treatments as you redefine their limitations. Be challenged to consider alternative sources of meaning in artworks through activities inspired by the narrative of the landscape as you resolve a process-based collection of works.

Participants develop practical skills and strategies for teaching visual arts K-6. A bushwalk provides inspiration and the opportunity to observe, interpret, respond and document the natural environment. Participants engage their senses and express themselves across a range of media, such as printmaking and ephemeral art. Participants are provided with written instructions and material lists for each artmaking activity.

Embark on a creative safari like no other. Designed to support students as they transition into the vast savannah of high school life, this camp is a chance to explore, create, and discover new strengths in a truly inspiring setting.