Collaborative Painting Wall

A fun, up-cycled, process art activity for little ones.

When I started making crafts with my son as a toddler, one of the first blogs I came across whilst looking for inspiration was ART BAR BLOG written by Barbara Rucci. Barbara has worked running workshops and facilitating art with young people for many years. Her approach to creativity is focused on ‘process art’. If you’re not familiar with the term, it is art that is routed in the process rather than the outcome. It is about an exploration of materials and creativity without expectation or judgement.

In her book Art Workshop for Children, Barbara describes process art as when:

‘Children sit down to create with no preconceived ideas, no ‘sample’ to look at or outcome to work toward, no right or wrong. It’s just them and the materials and the freedom to explore.’

In the same book, co-author Betsy McKenna further explains:

‘Process art represents the voice of the child, an authentic expression of what the child is thinking and feeling. It is through this free exploration of materials that a child can take risks, gain increased self-awareness and build confidence to experiment with new ideas.’

Along with resonating with Barbara’s approach to creativity, I also loved her use of up-cycled and junk materials. First up, they are free and readily available to all. Secondly, there is something much less daunting for a young artist to approach an old cardboard box than a pristine piece of white paper.

I was particularly inspired by this recycled materials art wall project and have since recreated it several time at home with my children and in creative workshops. Most recently, I built a painting wall for the younger members of our home education co-op. In this iteration, I built the wall and left it as a creative invitation to be decorated, but you could 100% invite the kids to build the wall as well.

I’m planning to leave the wall in our co-op space for a few weeks, each time putting out a different selection of materials. For the first 2 sessions, I will offer different colour paints, next soft wax pastels, then finally for a few sessions I plan to leave collage materials, like cut up paper, yarn, pompoms and magazine scraps along with glue. I’m excited to see how the artwork evolves!

We have recently had a few new families join our co-op, so I thought this was a super simple, low pressure activity for the younger members of the group to help them feel welcome in the space. I love how creativity can bring us together!

---

FIND OUT MORE

Barbara and her colleague Shannon are now here writing about creativity and play in their new Substack Art is Play:

---

EASY ART ACTIVITIES

Below, for paid subscribers (it’s only $6AUD per month), I’m sharing my new ART DECO SHAPES printable activity sheets for free. You can create cool collages and art deco inspired cardboard sculptures.