How to express your creativity?

Workshops in museums and art galleries allow participants to change their relationship with art. ELENI PHILIPPOU finds out more

These days, the cultural calendar is a lot fuller than it was before. A certain shift began to happen as we left the Covid lockdown period behind and perhaps art-deprived and socially-thirsty a surge in opportunities to get creative and out of the house appeared.

At each event I attend, I am surprised by how many seek these moments of creative exploration beyond the digital realm. Museums, galleries and cultural institutions offer, if not weekly, almost monthly, creative events. There have been meditations at galleries, clay workshops at museums, paper-making and cooking at exhibition spaces, private art therapy workshops at artist studios and many of them are free, or low cost.

Almost any interest you can think of can be found as a workshop offering these days. I attended ones on gut health, ecstatic dance, forest bathing, frame drumming, candle making, letter writing, the list goes on.

“There is a need for people to come together,” says head of the education department at AG Leventis Gallery Theodora Demetriou, and also a workshop host.

“I’ve noticed, mainly through social media, that there are more things to do today. I’m not sure if it has to do with also a new generation coming back to Cyprus and bringing fresh ideas but in any case, this might help other creatives to come out of their shells too.”

Theodora leads Meditation with Art events at the Nicosia gallery and also organises art workshops for children. “I love telling the kids that the impressionist artists made a change because they worked together and supported each other and it’s important to talk and learn from each other and I see a lot of collaborations happening.”

Workshops for children are more widespread, but those for adults are catching up. A move that can help offer artistic experiences for older people as well and attract a more diverse crowd to cultural spaces, including those who might feel at a distance from the art world.

When we were young, Theodora says, “many of us learnt to be strict with art and that someone is either talented or not. But you don’t have to be an artist, or paint well, to participate in the art world.”

In the many workshops I have attended, not all those taking part consider themselves artistically gifted. At one of these workshops, I met Madga who is also a keen attendee. “I have no particular relation to art,” she says.

“As a child I didn’t have many opportunities to go to the theatre or other cultural events, my generation was different, it was life after the war. I discovered this passion for art when I had a child and I would take him to art classes and events. When he became a teenager though he stopped wanting to go and I found I was actually doing it for me. During Covid, when I had all this time on my hands, I rediscovered this passion. Through painting and sculpting, I found the courage to dedicate time to myself and go to these art workshops. Now I go to one or two almost every week.”

But what does she gain from these workshops? “You build this connection with your inner world and you can really grow,” she says. “That’s what I like. I used to be a perfectionist and maybe this is why I never dared to do art. I thought I had to create something perfect but through these workshops, my thinking changed.”

The purpose of these art experiences perhaps is to allow creative expression to flow. Not to create a work of art. It’s not an art class after all. These experiences also allow us to spend time at art spaces that go beyond simply looking at what is art hanging on the wall from a distance. It changes the relationship we have with museums and galleries, the artists and ultimately, art itself.

And let’s not forget that while a new relationship with the art world is being formed, connections with others are also born. “There is so much you can gain from the other participants as well,” Magda concludes, “from their stories. We are all connected and art helps bring that out.”