Education - Sculpture Saint John

From the beginning, education was a key goal of Sculpture Saint John.

With each symposium the education component grew exponentially.

Along with helping people experience the process of creating public art, we wanted to give the public, interns and students opportunities to interact with world-class artists, acquire technical skills, and understand the relationship between artistic inspiration and creative practice. We started small and grew exponentially over five symposiums.

Sculpture Saint John grew with each iteration into a multifaceted program for people of all ages that included demonstrations by New Brunswick artists, workshops for the public in carving with stone

and a children’s program that welcomed over 1200 students to the site each year. These students were provided comprehensive tours to inform them about sculpture as an art form found throughout New Brunswick and the world. As well emerging artists joined us as interns. It was a pleasure to watch them grow as they learned from the experienced international sculptors.

The children’s educational program expanded each year. It reached more classes focusing on priority neighborhood schools and developed links with community partners such as, the Saint John Y, Boys and Girls Club and Teen Resource Centre to name a few. We delivered custom, one of a kind, sculpture workshops which engaged young people with their community while also teaching valuable hands-on creative problem-solving skills and belonging through art.

The Saint John Art Centre stepped up, donating its tools and space to expand the program to many more children and providing a venue for workshops for teachers and educators.

In 2022, the Learning Team renamed the program Sculpture For Everyone: Thinking in Three Dimensions, officially opening it up to people of all ages, focusing on under-served communities and intergenerational exchange involving L’Arche Saint John and Key Industries as well as many other groups. They created online and in-person workshops for teachers to bring the programming into their classrooms.

By our 5th symposium, the team nearly doubled their reach, offering workshops to over 2,000 participants in 21 different schools and forging formal partnerships with 29 schools and community groups.

They favoured ethical, inexpensive, mostly recycled materials. Often, the simpler the material, the more dramatic the participants’ reactions when they saw their finished works. They also created free online lesson plans for educators to use in the classroom or children to use at home.

Casting Communities

We rarely have the chance to plan and discuss our ideal communities. This workshop teaches key sculpting techniques—casting and subtractive sculpting— while also holding space to talk about the ways in which we set up and sustain our communities.

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Model Sculpture Garden

This is a practical, experiential way to learn the difference between shape and form, along with an introduction to abstraction. By applying qualities from a the natural world to the sculpture process, participants learn by hand about organic form. An ideal introductory subtractive sculpture lesson, the material is very familiar and also easy to manipulate.

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Paper Sculpture Trail

This is a practical, experiential way to learn the difference between shape and form, organic and geometric and 2D vs 3D. This is an ideal introductory sculpture lesson, as the transformation from 2D to 3D is very evident and easy to access.

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Sculpture Saint John Internship Program

The Sculpture Saint John Internship Program was an artist in residency unlike any other in Canada. It became an Immersive Master Class in stone sculpting for emerging New Brunswick artists.

It allowed them to be involved in the creative process, working under the mentorship of
professional sculptors. It was an intensive experience that allowed the interns to work and live in residence with the professional artists and to acquire skills in the medium of stone sculpture and develop their own artistic visions.

The interns contributed their skills to assist the professionals in the development of their sculptures, increasing the efficiency of the symposium’s operations. They gained
friendships and skills that will last a lifetime and made valuable contacts they will use in the future. In five sculpture symposiums, a total of 24 emerging New Brunswick artists participated in the Sculpture Saint John Internship Program.

2022 Interns

2018 Interns

2016 Interns

2014 Interns

2012 Interns

By raising awareness for public art and encouraging Canadians to create art of their own, Sculpture Saint John strengthened both the communities of its partners and the current professional state of the art of sculpture in New Brunswick. By expanding programming in education, Sculpture Saint John was investing in the future of Canadian art.

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