Education
To book lessons, arrange tours or simply find out what the Gallery can offer your school, contact our education and learning specialist:
Bianca van Leeuwen
+64-3-9417386 or +64-27-2940137
schools@christchurchartgallery.org.nz
We run education programmes for schools. Let us help your class discover art with hands on learning experiences based on our exhibitions and works in our collection.
Our education programmes offer students first-hand experience with real works of art whilst developing their creative and critical thinking skills. We make links across the New Zealand curriculum as well as provide students with great opportunities to develop key competencies in a social context. Discussions and activities can be adapted to suit all levels.
Gallery tours and visits are free.
Lessons take 90 – 120 minutes, involve a hands-on activity and cost $2 per student.
Bookings are essential. Our programmes are popular and we can only teach one class at a time. So get in early.
To book lessons, arrange tours or simply find out what the Gallery can offer your school, contact our education and learning specialist, Bianca van Leeuwen:
+64-3-9417386 or +64-27-2940137
Installation view of Povi Christkeke by Michel Tuffery 1999
PROGRAMME
Select a programme for more information on our art lessons.
Lesson time: 90 minutes
Class Limit: 36 students students
What happens when we widen our gaze beyond conventional art narratives, and what part does bravery play making art? Zine making is one way to challenge some of the traditional ideas that we apply to art. Many artists who make zines take risks – either because their work is very personal, deals with contentious issues, or says things in a new way. Students will reimagine the narrative of one of the works in the Gallery and reinvent it in a zine to take away.
Lesson time: as long as you like!
Class Limit: any students
Looking for things to do at home or school? Take a look at these worksheets and activities.
Art Gallery Explorer Cards
Pacific Printmaking
He Waka Eke Noa
Waka Huia
Explore our set of colouring activities based on works from our collection - check them out here.
Have a go at curating your own exhibition with the works in our collection using My Gallery
We would love to see your work when it's done - take a photo and send it to schools@christchurchartgallery.org.nz or tag us on social media!
Lesson time: as long as you like!
Class Limit: any students
Our lessons often book up fast but you are always welcome to bring your students on a self-guided tour of the Gallery. We have a wonderful resources for the Te Wheke: Pathways Across Oceania exhibition which you can use to guide your students through the spaces. Check out all of our current exhibitions here.
Please ensure you go over the Gallery Guidelines with your students so that they are aware of expectations in the Gallery spaces.
Email schools@christchurchartgallery.org.nz and let us know when to expect you. so we are able manage any clashes with events and other tours.
Lesson time: 30-60 minutes
Class Limit: 25 students
Students will take away an appreciation of art and consider a selection works that can cover a range of subjects, styles, media and purposes. The works viewed will be a selection from our current exhibitions. Students are expected to discuss and question what they see. Tours can be tailored to all levels.
Bookings essential.
Download our Gallery Guidelines below.
Download PDFLesson time: 90 Minutes
Class Limit: 36 students
Explore the Gallery with your students, discuss a range of artists’ work and explore ideas of navigation, belonging, identity and how we are connected across time and place. During the guided tour students will use signs and symbols to create a pictorial map of their own identity and journey through the Gallery which they will then complete using watercolour and pastel in our Education Centre. A great lesson for preschoolers and junior primary students!
- Key Competencies
- New Zealand histories
Lesson time: 90 minutes
Class Limit: 36 students students
Explore personal and collective histories, relationships to the environment, transitions between places and across time through textiles and moving image. Students will take a guided tour of selected works in Spring Time is Heart-break and Perilous: Unheard Stories from the Collection before heading to our classroom to make a three-dimensional sculpture of their own to take back to school.
Lesson time: TBC
Class Limit: TBC students
Top Art is an annual touring exhibition featuring a selection of the NCEA Level 3 portfolios that achieved Excellence in Visual Art in the previous year. Five streams are covered: design, painting, photography, printmaking and sculpture.
Top Art provides an opportunity for secondary students and teachers to gain an understanding of what is required to achieve Excellence at Level 3. It also allows members of the public to see the high quality art being created in schools.
This year the exhibition will be held in the Education Centre at Christchurch Art Gallery Te Puna o Waiwhetū from 3-17 April
Book in a time for your class to visit – email Bianca van Leeuwen
To find out more visit -
Lesson time: 90 minutes
Class Limit: 20 students students
Come and experience Maureen Lander’s magical UV light installation in Perilous with your class. Students will discuss how Lander has brought together different art forms and histories, from Māori string games to conceptual art before heading back to the classroom to create their own sculptural string performance using IMovie and a green screen.
Available until 14 July
- Understanding art in context
- Communicating and interpreting
- Developing ideas
- Developing practical knowledge
- Key Competencies
- New Zealand histories
- Participating and contributing
- Thinking
- Managing self
- Symbols and text
- Relating to others
- Using language
Lesson time: 90
Class Limit: 36 students
Come and explore what painting can be with your class. No one experiences art – or anything else – in the same way because we are all individuals. Who we are determines what we make and see. Artists like Miranda Parkes explore connections between our histories and futures, creating new languages and ways of seeing, and uncovering the unexpected through recycling, reusing and rewriting. Students will take a guided tour through Perlious: Unheard Stories from the Collection to discover how artworks can be made up of layers of stories and of materials alike. They will then take these ideas back into the classroom to make their own collage to take away.
Available until 21 July
Lesson time: 90 minutes
Class Limit: 36 students
Take a guided tour of selected works in Perilous: Unheard Stories from the Collection and examine how artists use colour, space, form and pattern to activate the eye. During the tour students will make recordings to use in the Education Centre where they will create an abstract work of art to take back to school.
Available until 21 July
Lesson time: 90 minutes
Class Limit: 36 students students
In this major body of new work, Cora-Allan (Ngāpuhi, Ngāti Tumutumu, Niue – Liku, Alofi) reflects on her recent two-week voyage by sea around Aotearoa, from the bottom of Te Waipounamu to Te Tai Tokerau in the north. Using whenua-pigment, hiapo, and other resources from the ngahere, she documented the shapes and views of the whenua of Aotearoa from the perspective of the moana. Cora-Allan's work responds to the legacy of colonial mapping and recording practices, and early encounters between Māori and Pākehā. Students will explore this exhibition on a guided tour before creating their own mixed media work in our classroom to take back to school.
Lesson time: 90 minutes
Class Limit: 36 students students
Across five decades, Ngāpuhi, Te Roroa and Ngāti Kahu artist Marilynn Webb (NZOM) dedicated herself to making art concerned with the relationships between land, sky and water. Students will participate in a guided tour of this major survey exhibition before taking part in a practical workshop in our classroom, creating a mixed media work to take back to school.
Available 8 June - 13 October