WORKSHOPS & PUBLIC PROGRAMS

PUBLIC PROGRAM

Hive Festival, Art Gallery of New South Wales, 2026

The Hive Festival was a two-day festival for children and families held at the Art Gallery of New South Wales in January 2026.

For the festival I developed a series of participatory works inspired by the playwork theories of Bob Hughes, who identified sixteen forms of play that children naturally engage in. The projects invited children to play, make and imagine, while encouraging adults to reconsider play as an essential part of creativity, connection and everyday life.

Face It

Face It invited children to create a self-portrait using the wet felting technique. Each portrait was then added to one of three large banners bearing the statements PLAY IS SERIOUS BUSINESS, PLAY IS REAL WORK, and PLAY IS THE WORK. As the festival unfolded, the banners became a collective portrait of the children who participated, a public affirmation that play is not separate from learning or life, but fundamental to both.

Many Bubbles Blessing

Installed across the Upper Forecourt of the Naala Badu building, Many Bubbles Blessing filled the space with thousands of floating bubbles. The bubble mixture was infused with four-leaf clover water, transforming each bubble into a playful blessing and a small offering of good fortune for anyone it landed upon.

Plushie Pals

Running throughout January, Plushie Pals invited visitors to design and hand-make a plush companion embodying a quality they wished to carry with them, be it love, joy, courage, hope or kindness. Each plushie became a tactile reminder of the values that sustain us, offering comfort, companionship and creative agency.

Across the weekend, the gallery became a place of making, playfulness, mayhem and shared imagination. Together, the projects celebrated play not simply as a childhood activity, but as a lifelong way of learning, connecting and understanding the world.

Images: Anna Kucera and the artist

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Many Bubbles Blessing on the Naala Badu forecourt at AGNSW

Images by Anna Kucera

PUBLIC PROGRAM

Following Hive Festival at the Art Gallery of New South Wales, the program travelled to Wollongong Art Gallery.

Plushie Pals was a hit, with participants designing and sewing some wonderful characters.

Another work at WAG was Sweep It Out the Door, Let It Come In Through the Window. As this festival took place at the beginning of the year, participants were invited to reflect on the transition into 2026. Each person received a postcard and was asked to draw what they wished to let go of on one side, and what they hoped to welcome into the year ahead on the other.

The completed postcards formed a collective artwork before being gathered together and ceremonially burnt, creating space for new intentions and possibilities.

Below is a selection of snaps from the Festival and further below some of the drawings shared by participants.

WORKSHOP

Plushie Pals, Fremantle Arts Centre, 2025

The original workshop took place at Fremantle Arts Centre in 2025, where twelve children, accompanied by a parent, grandparent or carer, spent the day designing and making a plushie that embodied an emotion they wished to carry with them.

Each participant began by identifying an emotion before imagining what it might look like if it became a character. Together we explored its shape, colour, texture and personality, sketching ideas before creating a construction plan. Participants then learnt simple sewing techniques to draw, cut, stitch and assemble their Plushie Pals by hand.

At the end of the workshop, each child introduced their finished plushie to the group, sharing the emotion it represented and the story behind its creation.

Throughout the day, the workshop became a space for creativity, conversation and connection. Children remained pretty engaged from beginning to end, while parents, grandparents and carers worked alongside them, sharing ideas, learning new stitching skills and generally making and being together. The result was more than a collection of handmade plushies, it was an opportunity to give tangible form to feelings, creating companions that could continue to offer comfort, courage and joy long after the workshop had ended.

Workshop

Collective Speak, Fremantle Arts Centre, 2025

Collective Speak is a participatory workshop exploring intuition, collective authorship and image-making through the creation of a shared oracle deck.

Held at Fremantle Arts Centre in 2025, participants were introduced to the purpose of oracle decks, along with the role they can play as tools for reflection, imagination and personal insight. Drawing on my own artistic practice, I shared techniques for working with Copic inks and discussed different approaches to developing imagery that was both intuitive and symbolic.

The group then ventured out into the Fremantle Arts Centre grounds, taking time to walk, observe and reflect before returning to the studio. Through a series of guided exercises, each participant identified an insight, message or offering they wished to contribute to the collective deck.

Using Copic inks, participants created an original artwork that became one card within the shared oracle. Once complete, the drawings were scanned, printed and assembled into a finished deck, with every participant receiving a complete set of the collaboratively authored cards to take home.

Collective Speak explores how individual perspectives can come together to create a shared language of symbols, reminding us that wisdom is not held by one person alone, but can emerge through listening, observation and collective creativity.