DIY Art - Creativity Kits
Edinburgh Art Festival invites you
to get creative at home
DIY Art is a series of activity packs from Edinburgh Art Festival and selected artists, inviting you to get creative at home. The instructional creativity kits give insight into an artist's practice, showing how you can use their processes and techniques to create your own unique artwork.
Creativity kits including art materials have been distributed to participants of WHALE Arts, SCORE scotland and other organisations in the Wester Hailes area.
When you have made your artworks, we’d love to include them in an online exhibition on our community engagement blog. Share your creations by emailing images to learning@edinburghartfestival.com.
Please contact learning@edinburghartfestival.com if you require assistance with getting art materials.
Special thanks to Edinburgh Art Shop.
You can see responses to artwork made by those who have received or downloaded a DIY Art - Home Creativity Kit here.
Make a Jam Jar Snow Globe by Sally Hackett
Recommended for ages 7–11, and suitable for classroom settings
14:30mins
What you will need:
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Glass jars
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Tin foil
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Plasticine
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Desiccated coconut* or glitter
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Extras: Sweet wrappers, stones, shells, twigs or flowers, sticky gems
*Allergy advice: Coconut – if concerned about intolerance/allergy please switch desiccated coconut for glitter.
Artist Sally Hackett invites you to make your own festive mini-snow globe world inside a recycled glass jar that used to hold your jam, peanut butter or pickled onions!
This tutorial shows you how to make small sculptures from materials close to hand, and construct a working snow globe complete with its own mini-blizzard!
HELLO Postcards by Peter Liversidge
Suitable for all ages
Peter Liversidge's HELLO Postcards creativity kit invites you to greet and connect with people by sending mail art, especially to those who have played an important role for you and others during the Covid-19 pandemic. The art pack corresponds with Peter's Flags for Edinburgh project, originally from Edinburgh Art Festival 2013, and revisited as part of our artist responses this year. The project invites organisations and communities across the city to fly a white flag that reads HELLO – sending a collective greeting to each other and the wider world. Before you post your mail art through the postbox or letterbox, take a picture and share it with Edinburgh Art Festival by tagging @EdArtFest and including #SayHello.
Download here.
Making a Dream World by Tamara MacArthur
Online video tutorial - recommended for ages 8–12
35:21mins
Alongside the piece It’s All Over But the Dreaming presented as part of our August 2020 offering, artist Tamara MacArthur has created a special DIY Art activity which invites you to imagine your own dream world, and turn it into a paper theatre set at home. You can find costumes for your characters using everyday things from around the house. Then, using a filming device like a phone or laptop, you can create your own show!
What you will need to make your dream world:
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A small area of clear wall with some space in front of it, to set up your filming device
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Phone/ tablet/ laptop
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Paper (about 20 sheets)
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Card (cereal boxes are perfect!)
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Colourful drawing pencils/ pens/ pastels
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Shiny scraps (kitchen foil/ sweet wrappers etc.)
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Scissors
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Glue
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Blue tack
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Tape
Watch your magical dream world become a reality!
Watch here.
WOW ORANGE by Naomi Garriock
Recommended for age 5–11
Artist and educator Naomi Garriock’s WOW ORANGE art pack invites young people, their family/carer or teachers to focus on colour, patterns and shapes from the natural world and drawing as a way of exploring therapeutic and meditative creative processes. The WOW ORANGE art pack is part of Children’s Art Week 2020 – a UK-wide programme run by Engage, the National Association for Gallery Education.
Download here.
Housemates by Sofia Niazi
Recommended for age 4-10
Artist and illustrator Sofia Niazi's 'Housemates' art pack invites young people and their family/carer to explore their homes in new ways, identifying interesting patterns, and using books, newspapers or magazines to combine collage and drawing to create colourful creatures, animals and people to populate and brighten your home.
Download here.
WAITING PAINTING by Alexa Hare
Recommended for age 16+, however, younger people may I enjoy too
Artist Alexa Hare's WAITING PAINTING art pack asks you to slow down and use the act of listening as a starting point for creating your own visual statements combining writing, paint and collage, this process will help you get lost in making, ordering your thoughts in a visual way to create a series of collages.
Download here.
Feeling Lost - Feeling Found - A companion by Pester and Rossi
What you will need
• Paper (at least 10 sheets – bigger sheets work better but scrap paper can also be used)
• Something to write with
• Paint (we use black acrylic but can be anything you have at home)
• A thin paintbrush
• Water in a cup for washing your brush
• A big bulldog clip, a stapler or something to hold paper together with
Pester and Rossi invites you to observe, wirte and paint when you are starting something new or you are feeling a bit lost in a project. This process remind you where you are, what is important to you and which way to go next.
Download Art Pack Here
