school visits to MRAG
The secret of a good school visit to MRAG is our belief in a strong emphasis on play and connecting to the lived experiences of children. MRAG education can create for school students of any age artistic and expressive school visits in connection with the current exhibition or suited to your specific needs.

what happens during a typical MRAG school visit?
There really is no typical MRAG school visit. Students have found themselves exploring wide ranges of artmaking activities as well as imagining, designing, even acting out their artistic ideas.

For a full day visit, four workshops are prepared in connection with the conceptual theme or medium explored in the current exhibition. The students are split into four groups travel around in a ‘round robin’ format to each of the workshops over the course of a school day.

what do the students do in the workshops?
Each workshop is designed with the students’ age or skill level in mind. A workshop is usually 25-40 minutes and the artmaking activity designed enables each child to have a finished work of art completed by the end of the session. In workshops in the past, students in years 4-6 created 3D collage photographs using materials like fabric, oil pastels, glitter, cellophane, buttons, even sand. Other conceptual based workshops ask students to explore the ideas that are present in the works on exhibition. In one workshop, students from years k-6 acted out their interpretation of the titles of artworks.

MRAG education believes that cost shouldn’t get in the way of getting students involved in our gallery. We encourage school groups to visit the gallery for FREE on an informal basis. Call ahead and arrange your visit a few weeks in advance and our education team can organise a speaker to address your students about the exhibition.

If you keep informed about our exhibition program, there are several opportunities per year to engage your students in low cost alternatives. For instance in the Pencilworks exhibition of exquisite drawings by artists Nicola Hensel and Susan Ryman, the artists set up a large workstation and spent every Wednesday working on drawing projects as part of an artist in residence program.

MRAG education also creates kids activities for each exhibition that shows at the gallery. These kids activities are designed for parents and young children so they can interact on a more childlike level with the exhibition and better understand some of the themes. There are examples of these kids activities in our education archive.

For selected exhibitions, MRAG education has also created Education Kits that adhere to both primary and secondary syllabi, and many of these have been free for educational institutions.

please note: When visiting MRAG, school groups are required to provide adequate staffing and adult supervision. It is the responsibility of the school staff/guardians to provide adequate behaviour management during the course of their visit to the art gallery. Behaviour management is not the responsibility of MRAG education staff/volunteers.

For more information contact the gallery
phone (02) 49 349859
fax (02) 49 331657
email artgallery@maitland.nsw.gov.au