Our next session will run on:
Saturday 05 October 2024, 1pm–3pm
Location: The Barn, Milton Keynes Arts Centre, MK14 5DZ
£4 per participant, payable on the door
Drop-in session (no booking required)
Children must be accompanied by a supervising adult at all times.
What to expect:
Create your own funny face portraits using drawing, tracing and colourful collaging
Coming up!
Saturday 2 November | 1pm-3pm
Celebrating Light
As the nights draw in, we take inspiration from our ancestors from a range of cultures celebrating light! Join us in making colorful lanterns to keep the darkness at bay.
Saturday 7 December | 1pm-3pm
Festive Crowns
Tis the season! Join us for this festive workshop making and decorating your own reusable Christmas crowns.
What you've missed so far this year:
September
We explored the power of colour and pattern in transforming spaces, elevating moods and sparking positivity for this Family First Saturday. Using paints, paper, fabric and cardboard, building a Morag Myerscough inspired collaborative and interactive installation and creative poster-making, inspired by the colourful works of Yinka Ilori! This hands-on session introduced families to bold patterns, bright colours, and unique design concepts, encouraging them to express their creativity and imagination.
July
We kicked off summer by taking inspiration from artist David Hockey exploring mark making and vibrant colour combinations to create beautiful and bright landscapes. Using oil pastels, paint and bright papers to create layers of detail.
June
We celebrated World Environment Day discovering the wildlife we have in our garden through our mini-bioblitz activities and nature inspired art activities.
May
Artists have always found inspiration in flowers. They are a symbol of joy, beauty, renewal, new life and of course, spring.
Join us for our May Family First Saturday where we too will be taking inspiration from the season's superstars, flowers!
-Folk Flower painting
-Still life observation
-Seed bombs to grow our own wildflowers for the bees
April
Did you know 15th of April is World Art Day? A day that celebrates artists and promotes the importance of art in our lives. We at Milton Keynes Arts Centre believe that everybody is creative and therefore everybody should be celebrated.
On Saturday 6th of April for Family First Saturday, we enjoyed a special afternoon during which all you artists out there made your own art materials! From a clay alternative to chalk and even egg tempera paint: a medium used by the creator of the ‘Mona Lisa’: Leonardo Da Vinci, in commemoration of whom the day was first created.
March
To mark International Women’s Day on Friday 8 March, Milton Keynes Arts Centre presented a range of art activities exploring colour and pattern through the work of historical and contemporary women artists of significance.
Inspired by the ‘soak stained’ paintings of Helen Frankenthaler, there were opportunities to paint with water; to create a collage in psychedelic colours referencing the work of Yayoi Kusama; to make three-dimensional figures using traditional African fabric designs based on characters found in Lubaina Himid’s work; and to create your own piece of Op Art, taking inspiration from the paintings of Bridget Riley.
February
With the approach of Spring, for the first of our Family First Saturday drop-ins of 2024, we invite families to create art from light. Activities include making cyanotype prints, shadow drawings and translucent abstract window hangings. In advance of Random Acts of Kindness Day on 17 February and inspired by the artist, Lee Mingwei’s ‘The Moving Garden’, families are also encouraged to make an origami flower, which they can then give to a stranger who they feel would benefit from the unexpected act of generosity.
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