Skip to content

Go Create! Art Builders

As we head into a second lockdown, Gulbenkian and ART31 are inviting you to get creative and learn new skills as part of Art Builders Project.

In summer 2020, we were inspired by the work of Animate Arts and their Art Builders project and we wanted to make sure you’ve heard about Art Builders too! So, we re-released their toolkits every week, and – excitingly – we also made some extra activities to go alongside them!

We’d love you to work through the toolkits with your family!  Check out our resources below.

We’d really love you to share anything you make with us, so please send any photos/videos of your art work (whether that be from their toolkits, or from our additional suggestions) to creativelearning@kent.ac.uk or post on social media tagging @thegulbenkian or using our brand new hashtag #GulbArtBuilders. Make sure you tell us your name, age and something about what you have made too.

We will be creating a gallery of all of your work, which all of the artists that work with Animate and Gulbenkian are really excited about seeing!


Art BuildersArt Builders word art logo

During the lockdown period, the brilliant Animate Arts have created some incredible Art Builders at Home Toolkits, which lots of families and schools have been involved in. Art Builders is a programme all about inspiring schools to champion creativity in education! Obviously, this year has a been a little different, which is how Art Builders at Home came about! Read more Art Builders.

Animate Arts launched the programme at the end of June 2020 and have been releasing each of the 6 toolkits weekly, and collecting artworks along the way for a 360 virtual reality film. If you want a chance to be part of that, you have until the 7th August – they are sill collecting artworks from Toolkits #5 and #6. Just head to the toolkits on their website for instructions.

 

Art Builders Banner

Week one: Japan

Nahoko Kojima is a contemporary artist who uses the traditional Japanese master craft of papercutting to create the most extraordinary sculptures of animals. From floating tigers to polar bears, her impressive hand-cut art works will inspire our 1st toolkit of creativity.

Art Builders Tool Kit #1
Art Builders Banner

Week Two: Cornell's Boxes

Cornell was an artist who lived most of his life in physical isolation in his family home. He created extraordinary art works with objects and materials that he found hear his home.

Art Builders Tool Kit #2
Art Builders Banner

Week Three: Gormley's Army

Gormley is one of the UKs most famous living artists, creator of the iconic ‘Angel of The North’ in Gateshead. His sculptures are of people in lots of different places. In Toolkit #3, young artists will sculpt a paper army of people to exhibit in a ‘Gormley 360° Art Gallery’.

Art Builders At Home - Toolkit #3 Gormley's Army
Art Builders Banner

Week Four: Shonibare's Fabric

Yinka Shonibare is an artist who works in a range of art forms including painting, sculpture, photography and filmmaking.

Shonibare’s work explores race, class and cultural identity. He wants to find out who we are and what makes us unique. He often uses brightly coloured batik fabric to create sculptures, installations and paintings. This fabric is seen as a symbol of Africa, but actually it has patterns on it from Indonesia (in Asia), and was made in Holland (in Europe) before arriving in West Africa! Shonibare transforms this African wax fabric into clothing, sculptures and paintings.

Art Builders At Home - Toolkit #4 Shonibare's Fabric
Art Builders Banner

Week Five: Wiley's & Sherald's Miniatures

Kehinde Wiley and Amy Sherald are both modern-day portrait artists. They make paintings of people with incredible likenesses of their models. Sometimes they seek inspiration from people in the past, sometimes people alive today, but both paint almost exclusively black people; particularly from Afro-American backgrounds, for a range of reasons but mostly to highlight their lack of presence in art galleries.

Art Builders At Home - Toolkit #5Wiley's & Sherald's Miniatures

ART31

ART31 takes its name from Article 31 of the UN Convention on the Rights of a Child, which states that ‘Children have the right to relax and play, and to join in a wide range of cultural, artistic and other recreational activities’.

ART31 is a vision created with, by, and for young people in Kent, championing the belief that all children and young people have an entitlement to access high quality arts and culture, to empower them to achieve their creative potential, and to genuinely engage young people as equal partners in any decision making that affects them.

The ART31 Youth Board is made up of young people from across Kent aged 13-25 who steer its governance, and influence policy and practice across the county and beyond, challenging the creative sector to examine existing ways of working and integrate young people into the core of their practice.

Our projects with young people

GENFest Young people posing in a cardboard Instagram frame

ART31 Generate

ART31 Generate is made up of young people from across Kent aged 13-25. They steer ART31's governance, influence arts policy and practice, and programme the annual GENFest Youth Takeover Festival.

Youth Theatre

Fantastic and fun sessions for ages 13-18 years, encouraging creativity and theatre-making skills.

Live Streaming film equipment.

SCREEN31

Screen31 is a group for young people aged 15-25 interested in developing their film-making skills.
TECH31

TECH31

TECH31 provides free practical training in technical theatre for ages 13 - 25
Two actors laughing.

National Theatre Connections – Gulbenkian Young Company

NT Connections is the National Theatre’s nationwide youth theatre festival. Each year it offers a unique opportunity for youth theatres and school theatre groups to stage new plays written for young people by some of theatre’s most exciting playwrights, and to perform in leading theatres across the UK.
Gulbenkian Uncovered image 03

Gulbenkian Uncovered

Are you enthusiastic, committed and creative? Gulbenkian Uncovered gives University of Kent students the chance to programme films and run events.

Square Pegs 1

Square Pegs Arts

Square Pegs Arts are an award winning charity who provide drama groups, music projects and other accessible Arts opportunities for children and young adults who have learning disabilities and autism, and produce original, inspiring, challenging Theatre. Difference is celebrated and everyone is supported to shine in their own way.
A selection of images arranged on a wall

KRAN Fam

KRAN Fam is a drama group in partnership with Kent Refugee Action Network for young refugees and asylum-seekers.

Accessible Film Club

Relaxed Screenings

Monthly film screenings that are open to all, especially those with autism and learning disabilities.

Young People - Screen31 ARTY31

ARTY31

Gulbenkian’s ARTY31 group is for young people aged 8-12 with a wide variety of arts interests.

Film tickets

Results
Clear
See what other events are happening at the Gulbenkian
What's on Link icon