It is great to see so many students making great progress on their artworks during lockdown. This week we feature a beautiful watercolour by Grace O’Connor from Year 9.

The Creators' Room opportunity

Past Rangi Ruru students, Sophie Paterson and Charlotte Sherratt, are providing a wonderful opportunity for young art students in Ōtautahi. Incredible artwork is created at a secondary school level and, more often than not, student art folios, filled with fabulous works, end up in a deep, dark corner of their parents' garage.

The Creators' Room, which launched in 2018, offers a youth development programme available to young creatives aged 15-18 years to showcase their work and connect with our community of collectors. The programme currently receives over 2,000 submissions per year from young creatives. The Creators’ Room provides upfront financial support, through the purchase and professional framing of the original artworks and funding the reproduction of limited edition prints. The artworks are then made available to the collectors through an online marketplace and annual exhibition, with a commission of all sales going directly to the artists.

The Creators’ Room is on a mission to give their Creators the first taste of a career as an artist and encourage continued participation in, and appreciation of, the arts once they leave the support of the school environment. “Secondary School art students face a number of roadblocks when taking the first daunting leap to publicly showcase their artwork. They lack resources and funding to create and present their work on a professional level and have limited ways of marketing themselves and connecting with the wider arts community.”

Since its inception in 2018, The Creators’ Room has provided upwards of $210,000 in financial support to our young Creator’s in Canterbury alone. “As part of our mission to encourage continued participation in the arts, we award an annual scholarship to one deserving Creator, consisting of a $3,000 cash contribution to help support the growth and development of their artistic career.”

In the near future, once a new post-lockdown date is confirmed, the 2021 annual ‘Art Stars’ exhibition will open in Ōtautahi’s CBD, featuring works from nine current and 2020 Rangi Ruru students – Brie Freeman, Eva Wu, Sam Senior, Ava Smith, Saige Henderson, Eleanor McVicar, Amie Coombes, Sophia Smith and Brigit Moston. Visitation numbers are expected to reach 15,000 over the two week exhibition. We encourage students to apply to The Creators Room for the 2022 exhibition and scholarship. thecreatorsroom.co.nz