Imagine Play Inspire

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Creative Play & Process Art Specialist helping children and adults strengthen their confidence, creativity & wellbeing

kids art classes & adult creativity workshops
🙋🏽‍♀ 20+ years of experience

06/08/2026

Because it's the slow moments that really allow us to be present, connect with ourselves and each other, and make room for ideas to grow ❤️

03/08/2026

So many adults tell me: "I'm just not the creative kind...", or "I've got no creative bone in my body"...

Usually, what they mean though is:

"I can’t draw realistically."
"I'm no good at painting."
"Everything I create looks a bit… questionable."

But creativity doesn't equal being good at traditional art!

It lives in experimenting, following an idea, changing direction, solving problems and wondering, "What happens when I try this..?"

Most of us haven’t lost our creativity.

We've just spent years learning to judge it, compare it and wait until we have a "good" or "worthy" idea before beginning.

Sound familiar? 😏

What most of us really need, is a little permission...

Permission to make a mess, to create something weird, to enjoy the process without needing to prove that we're good at it.

That's what Reclaim Your Inner Creative is all about. Not teaching you how to "correctly" be creative (my phone just autocorrected this to 'crazy' .... close! 🤣 ), but helping you reconnect with the part of you that already is. ❤️

Waitlist now open for future workshops, DM to join.

Hiiii and sunny greetings from Portugal! 🌞The monthly review has become a bit of a ritual for me to pause and look back ...
31/07/2026

Hiiii and sunny greetings from Portugal! 🌞

The monthly review has become a bit of a ritual for me to pause and look back for a moment, appreciating what's been and who's been part of the magic of the previous month. I didn't want to miss it despite being on holiday at the moment. 😁

However! It's bullet points that will have to do this time round:

1- July brought the end of term 3, a couple of school holiday camps and the beginning of the long awaited trip to Europe!

2+3 - final group classes and 1:1's for a wee while

4 - welcomed a couple of new young creatives to the Creative Play & Process Art Specialist | Taranaki family!

5 - another beautiful parent-child workshop at Volcanoview Taranaki

6 - 2 weeks of Creative Calm in the school holidays

7 - soaking up the last sunny winter days in Taranaki before heading away... ✈️

8+9 - spotting art at Hamad International Airport in Doha

10-12 - beautiful spots in Lisbon, Portugal

13 - playing, learning and performing at Irreverente Impro Lisboa, so much fun! Great workshop by Vincent Van Nieuwenhuyze who sent us to hell 🔥

14 - exploring Porto and adding a doodle to this display journal

15 - sunsets in Porto

16 - started collecting snaps of the beautiful tiles all around us

17 - walking along the cute palheiros in Costa Nova, Portugal

18 - sketching imperfect travel snippets, especially people.. which I normally avoid as I'm finding it sooo tricky!

So many ideas, so much inspiration and so much to write about and share with all! More soon ✨

Franzi ❤️

What happens when you take three mornings, two tamariki and a wide range of open-ended creative materials...? 👀You get C...
30/07/2026

What happens when you take three mornings, two tamariki and a wide range of open-ended creative materials...? 👀

You get Creative Calm, our very small, cosy and playful school holiday programme.

With only two children, there’s no rushing from one activity to the next and no pressure to keep up with a bigger group.

There’s time to follow an idea, change direction, make a glorious mess, take a break, return to something later and get completely absorbed in the process.

Across the three mornings, we explore different materials, head outside nature-treasure-hunting, experiment freely and create following our curiosity.

Sometimes the children work side by side. And sometimes they get absorbed into their own little creative worlds for a while.

We play drawing games to connect, draw imperfectly with joy and warm up the creative juices each day.

Creative Calm is playful, creative and spacious... with plenty of individual support, loads of conversations and room for each child to be exactly who and where they are. ❤️

To find out about upcoming art camps, make sure to join the mailing list, as upcoming classes & workshops get announced withing there first.

29/07/2026

Try this fun and simple drawing game...

(Make sure to save this so you can easily find it again!)

✨ MIRROR DRAWING ✨

Fold an A3 piece of paper in half. Two of you will be doing a drawing together.

Decide who is going to have the first turn at leading... you’ll swap roles in the second round.

They draw a shape or line on their half, then the other person tries to mirror it on their side.

Keep adding new lines, shapes and details until your drawing feels complete (with the leader starting each time).

Then start a new picture, but swap who leads.

A lovely game for practicing observation, slowing down, accepting the ideas of others, and creating something together, without needing to decide what you’re drawing before you begin.

It's especially great for the child who gets frustrated when their drawing isn't "perfect", tends to micromanage the whole project, or finds it tricky when someone else has a different idea.

Because there’s no single right outcome and both people get to lead, it gently practices flexibility, turn-taking and letting go of a little control... all while creating something together.

Let me know if you're giving this one a go (pictures always welcome in my DM's 😁). And reach out if you have any questions!

Lastly, make sure to save this one to your drawing game folder ❤️

I loooove a beautiful piece of children’s art... But...I try to stay away from planning our lessons and workshops with t...
27/07/2026

I loooove a beautiful piece of children’s art...

But...

I try to stay away from planning our lessons and workshops with the goal in mind to make a "beautiful" something.

Because children are tuned in to watch and listen for what we value...

And if the biggest reaction comes when something looks impressive, tidy, clever, realistic or wall-worthy, they likely will start aiming for that in their future creative endeavours...

And then the making and creating becomes less about curiosity and more about getting it right or pleasing someone other than themselves.

But it's the messy, unstructured, and possibly slightly chaotic, process where so much magic happens...

The moment they try something unusual or when something doesn’t work.
The moment they don’t give up, or the moment they make a decision that only makes sense to them.
The moment they proudly explain that the canvas covered entirely in black (😬😬😬) is actually a portal for space cats...

These things matter so much more than whether something looks beautiful.

Also, who even gets to define "beauty" in this context? Probably a topic for another post... 😅

Share this to help make imperfect making & creating the norm ❤️

22/07/2026

Interrupting your scroll to bring you some slow moments from our parent-child workshop earlier this month...

I remember when I first had the idea to run a workshop where parents are equally participating, not just watching from the sidelines.. I was so excited and couldn't wait to make it happen!

Fast forward half a year and we've had three of those!

Thanks Volcanoview Taranaki for being a gem of a venue and space, always bringing the bestest and most welcoming vibes!

Here's what people have said about this workshop:

"A comfortable space with permission to be creative. So nice to have one-on-one with my daughter!"

"I loved the whole thing!!"

"So cool to do it with them, instead of drop off or sit and watch!"

Who's keen for the next one??

21/07/2026

Three mornings of nature exploration, play, making, slowing down, imagining and connecting. Oh my ❤️

Copying gets a bit of a bad reputation...Of course, we definitely don’t want children to feel like they have to make the...
20/07/2026

Copying gets a bit of a bad reputation...

Of course, we definitely don’t want children to feel like they have to make the same thing as everyone else. That’s not what this is about at all.

It's more that copying itself isn’t automatically a problem...

Because more often than not it’s how children begin learning new skills.

They see an idea, borrow it, test it, stretch it, add something strange to it, and eventually... it becomes theirs.

Which, on that note, is also how a lot of adult creativity works. We just call it "being inspired" because it sounds more sophisticated than "I saw a thing and wanted to do that too" 🙊

The important part for creativity is moving past the copy.

E.g. by leaving enough room for children to add, change, question, remix and make the idea their own. And for us to play and experiment with different ways of doing what inspired us in the first place. Oh the joys and surprises that follow...! ✨

Share this with your creative community so everyone's on the same page 😁

16/07/2026

If every activity tells children exactly what to do, when do they get the chance to discover what they might do?

This is one of the reasons I'm so passionate about process art.

When children are free to explore materials, test ideas, make mistakes, change direction, and follow their curiosity, they're doing so much more than "making art".

They're learning to think for themselves.

And in a world full of instructions, I think that's pretty important. ❤️

What opportunities for open-ended exploration have your children enjoyed lately?

Address

Oakura
4314

Telephone

+64278370498

Website

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