**WE DID IT!!  THANK YOU!!  We're so thriled to have reached our target, we cannot thank our supporters enough!  There is still time to join the campaign and pick up a fantastic reward.  The more we raise, the better the facilities we can build for your studio!  Whatever we raise from now goes towards heating.  So please join our campaign BY 9PM 22ND JULY and help us raise enough to instal heating for your studio!**

Welcome to The Art Room. We are an art class, studio workshop and all round creative hub in the Inner West of Melbourne and we really need your help.

Unfortunately the building that has been our home for the past 2 and a half years has been sold and sadly this means that we have to leave our beautiful studio and go about setting-up all over again.

Before we tell you why we need your help, we just want to tell you a little bit about what The Art Room is all about. 

We teach classes in painting and drawing, facilitate workshops in a range of art forms taught by respected professional artists, offer professional development workshops and mentoring, and run a fabulous growing program of tutored and untutored life drawing sessions every week. Above all we are a vibrant and inspiring place to come to connect with art and other artists and be nurtured and supported in your artistic journey.

We are an alternative resource and art education for adults with students travelling from all over the city and beyond to join our programs. We cater for complete beginners, art school graduates through to practicing artists. Our aim is offer high quality programs that develop your technical knowledge and understanding but also challenge you to question and explore your own creative language by examining art history and contemporary art practice.

We have amazing teachers come to teach at The Art Room. We only employ teachers who are great at what they do, are well respected professional artists, with the majority having lectured at University level. They are enthusiastic and generous with sharing their knowledge, and importantly really nice people! 

GODWIN BRADBEER TEACHING IN THE DRAWING THEATRE - JUST ONE OF THE AMAZING TEACHERS WE HAVE REGULARLY TEACH AT THE ART ROOM

We are overwhelmed by how The Art Room has been embraced and supported by our students and to see the community and friendships that continue to emerge is really wonderful.

When you to join one of our classes we want you to feel welcomed, supported, encouraged and respected. We want you to leave feeling excited and inspired.

But – we have a vision that The Art Room can be SO MUCH MORE!

So why do we need your help?

Although having to move initially came as a shock we feel this is actually a blessing in disguise as we have started to outgrow our current space. Our classes are full, our drop in life-drawing sessions are booked out and each week we turn people away due to lack of room. We can currently only offer one class at a time and to run large ambitious workshops we have had to find alternative spaces.

ONE OF THE MANY LIFE DRAWING SESSIONS AT CAPACITY - THIS ONE WAS THE ASRC FUNDRAISER.

We have a vision of The Art Room that includes further supporting our students and opening up our programs to the wider public through free art talks and workshops, and panel discussions where you can hear top Melbourne artists discuss their practices and careers. We want to provide large drawing events where professional artists and art students will be able to undertake life-drawing unlike anything previously offered in Melbourne.


THE DRAWING THEATRE 2013 -  HELD IN ANOTHER VENUE DUE TO LACK OF ROOM

Our vision is to offer this in a large purpose built art studio where students have the experience of working as professional artists with everything at their fingertips in a supportive and inspiring community. We picture a facility that will support you to be the best, most inspired artist you can be – we want to offer opportunities for everyone because we believe that art is central to a rich, meaningful and engaged life. 

Our vision is also to contribute to the really exciting renewal and development that is happening in the inner west and play a part in the wonderful community we live in here. 

THE NEW SPACE AT 125 HYDE ST, FOOTSCRAY A LITTLE UNINSPIRING AT THE MOMENT BUT YOU WAIT TO SEE WHAT WE HAVE PLANNED!!!

The great news is that we have found the perfect building to transform into a fabulous, large light-filled studio situated between Yaraville, Seddon and Footscray. This will allow us to nearly double our teaching space, provide free parking and hugely improved facilities. The new building will enable us to create more exciting art experiences, be more inventive in our classes, and employ more wonderful teachers and life models. While not being used as a teaching space it will also open up the opportunity to become a pop up theatre and performance space and venue for exhibtions! We will be open to all ideas!

A larger more flexible teaching studio will allow us to expand the untutored life drawing sessions, incorporating multiple models and perspectives. It will open up the opportunity to co-teach workshops and run multiple programs. An outdoor courtyard will allow students to catch-up and chat over a coffee during breaks or workshop lunches – because we believe that conversation is such a huge part of the creative process and because we want to foster a community!

Our current programs cover the costs of teachers, materials and facilities but are not driven by profit. It is really important for us that what we offer is affordable and accessible to all and that we keep our classes and workshop costs as low as possible. 

We believe that the expanded opportunities in the new building will allow us to cover the increase in rent without increasing our fees but we don’t have the capital we need to set up the new space properly.

If you are a current, past or future student, an art enthusiast,  believe art is an important part of our community or just like the idea of what we want to do then PLEASE help in what ever way you can. That might be making a pledge, sharing our campaign with your network or both. Anything you can do will be greatly appreciated.

We have some amazing rewards including workshops, memberships, life drawing extravaganzas and limited edition prints from some of our incredible teachers past and present.

Please be part of something AMAZING!!!

REWARDS

Thank you so much to the teachers who have contributed to the rewards including the workshops. Your support means the The Art Room can continue to offer amazing things.

LIMITED EDITION PRINTS AVAILABLE IN A4 AND A3

Please click on the artists name to see more of their work.

PRUDENCE FLINT

MERRYN TREVETHAN

ERIKA GOFTON

GODWIN BRADBEER

ILONA NELSON

SHARON BILLINGE

STEFAN GEVERS

FILOMENA COPPOLA

LIFE DRAWING REWARDS

ERIKA GOFTON

ALL CHARCOAL ON PAPER 70X100cm UNFRAMED

For us to be able to make this building suit our current and future plans we are aiming to set up the space in the best way we can from the very beginning.

We have recieved quotes from trades and estimate our total cost for this to be around the $55,000-$60,000 to do EVERYTHING. We are however setting our POZIBLE target at the bare bones figure of $26,000. If we raise more then obviously we can do more!

At present the building is really just a promising empty shell without adequate bathroom or kitchen facilities, so we need to build walls, new bathroom and a kitchen. We want to have a mezannine level built to maximise the space. We need to grind and polish the concrete floor and install specialised sinks to make washing up easier, replace roller doors with more windows and paint inside and out. Specific studio lighting will make it suitable to work at night. Install heating and cooling. We also need lots of storage for our library of books, props and still life objects, equipment and for students work and materials. We need more easels and tables, and gallery hanging system to enable us to easier hang our students’ work and open up the opportunity to hold exhibitions.

FUNDS RAISED IN THE CAMPAIGN WILL COVER THE COST OF:

ANY EXTRA FUNDS WILL GO TOWARDS:

Tradesmen to assist with work 

Heating and cooling

Signage for outside building 

Purpose built storage 

Construction of mezzanine space 

Replace roller doors with glass doors to let in more light 

Construction of courtyard space 

Blinds 

Trolleys for easels, boards and tables 

Painting storage rack 

Gallery hanging system 

Ceiling fans 

Better heaters for models  

New easels and tables

Removalists costs to move the current Art Room 

So what are some of our challenges? 

We have planned this transition to run as smoothly as possible but the main challenge will be trying to coordinate the fitout of the new space whist still keeping the current Art Room programs operating.

OUR WEBSITE - www.the-art-room.com.au

FACEBOOK

INSTAGRAM - @the_art_room_