What a pleasure it was to teach my final workshop in Whangarei, where I taught my last workshop in New Zealand 2 1/2 years ago, after NZ Quilt Symposium.
There was an arts festival happening in the park outside, on the morning of class, and we got to enjoy some live music from a guy playing guitar and singing 70’s folk songs while we worked.
The gals in Whangarei have access to a great place for mixed-media classes, with windows all around, lots of tables, and a lovely outdoor patio that worked beautifully for hanging our fabric out to dry over lunch.
I love that one student brought some aqua fabric to work on alongside her “tea” fabric, that she dyed with acrylic inks after taking my Paint and Printapalooza workshop the last time I taught there.
It was a lovely day. I’m enjoying remembering my teaching days in New Zealand among friends and enthusiastic students, while at the same time feeling sad about the present difficulty of teaching in person workshops, since face to face interaction isn’t possible for the indefinite future.
For years, one of the things that has made me so resistant to teaching online is that I like being with people and helping them in the moment. Picking up a paintbrush and demonstrating just how to make a particular technique work more successfully, but I realize for the time being online teaching is our only option, so I will be working on creating content for online workshops as well.
Creating online classes is a lot of upfront work; writing, filming and organizing content, and then building it out on a website, so it will probably take at least a month before I have any of my regular classes available, but I’ll let you know as soon as I do.
At this point, I’ve ordered equipment to start filming videos. I’ve researched teaching platforms and have opened an account on Coarsecraft that I’ve uploaded a free class for making masks based on my earlier tutorial, so that I could familiarize myself with the website, before creating more complex multimedia workshops. Follow this link if you want to check it out to see how a class would work.
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I’ll probably have one more blog post to wrap up my trip to New Zealand, and then I’ll focus on my creative life closer to home. Stay safe and well my friends.
Keep creating,
Judy
ABOUT JUDY
Judy is an artist, explorer, image wrangler, knowledge seeker, instructor, speaker, creative alchemist, and purveyor of inspiration, helping others channel creativity on a daily basis.
2 responses to “My last workshop in New Zealand”
It was good to see (and hear) you with Pokey the other day. Today there was talk of online classes, and how much better it is to be in person. I was thinking that you also share materials in your classes, like screens and stamps? Deborah Boschert shared at least pens. So there’s a disadvantage of online! Of course, the accessibility is great. Good luck.
Hi Rebecca,
yes I do share a lot of materials in my classes, I like to do that so people can play, try something new and have the the full experience without having to invest so much money in something they may not know if they’ll ever want to do again. Also it’s much cheaper for students to use shared supply of paints for a nominal fee than invest in a set of paints if they are unsure about a process, so then they are more likely to take a chance on a class.
The ability to use video for online classes makes the experience so much better, but I also know that a lot of my teaching in a live workshop comes from helping a student one on one, after I’ve demoed a process, then watching them work and seeing where they are struggling and then I can model for them again exactly how to hold a tool, or to adjust how much water they are using with their paint, or notice that they’ve missed one step in the process of printing or painting. With an online class, it won’t be as easy for me to decipher what went wrong from a photo or written question as it would be for me to be there and see it when it’s happening. So those have been some of my reservations about online classes, but given that I’ve taught for so many years now, I’m getting pretty good at knowing where students tend to struggle and will be able to give extra attention to those things.
Ultimately, my goal is to help people be successful in mastering how to use different media, so they can create the work they want to make and I guess for the indefinite future I’ll be doing that online. 🙂