When you immerse yourself in one of the 12 two-day Arts Muster Workshops—29-30 August, 2026—you will experience a very particular sort of magic that happens when we make things together. Beyond the magic of our minds and hands bringing a visible, physical thing into existence, making things together conjures myriad invisible, enriching connections with ourselves, others and the world.
In the words of Samantha Tannous, founder of Arts Muster and a practising artist herself:
“Arts Muster is built on the belief that creativity is a powerful vehicle for wellbeing and human connection. We are creating spaces and events where people aren’t just looking at static art on a wall—they are rolling up their sleeves and making together. People are gathering, connecting, exploring, discovering, learning, being inspired together.”
Picture classrooms at Huskisson School and two historic classrooms at Jervis Bay Maritime Museum humming with creative activity. There are a suite of arts + crafts workshops underway that are being guided by practising artists and makers.
Each class has no more than 10 people in it, engrossed in making things together—variously looking, drawing, sketching, mark-making, mixing colour, painting, dyeing, printing, designing, stitching, weaving, modelling, sculpting, walking, observing, collecting, composing, constructing, conversing.
In these small-group workshops, tutors are providing unparalleled individual attention. It is a given that participants—of all abilities and experience—are gaining knowledge of materials and media, learning practical methods and techniques, developing skills.
If we also attune to the ‘vibe’ in the room—what is felt and sensed and being revealed through subtle shifts in body language, mood, energy, the quality of spoken and unspoken interactions—what is happening to people’s minds and bodies?
I know from my own creative practice and doctoral research that making things in the company of others can have profound, beneficial impacts on individual and collective mental and physical wellbeing, but what do tutors who are leading workshops at this year’s Arts Muster Festival have to say?
In interviews with Greer Taylor, maiki-jane blakeney, and Anita Johnson, I ask each of them, what do you witness happening in the room when people are making things together?
These three practising artists are all very different characters, have different world-views, and have three distinctly different forms of creative practice. Given this, you may expect they give me very different responses.
Not so. Their responses are remarkably similar both in what they say and how they say it. In essence, creating connection—be it connection to ourselves, to others, to place, to the material world.
Greer, maiki-jane and Anita all describe witnessing the parallel processes at play when people are working with their hands, making things together. While they are creating a material thing, they are also creating connections with each other.
As maiki-jane describes it, making things together, ‘brings people out of isolation’.
“There’s this beautiful thing that happens when we sit together, people from different backgrounds and places … We go through the same processes with exactly the same prompts, but as we sit together, so many different stories and experiences come through.”
“It creates this beautiful unity where background doesn’t matter. We drop in to this place in ourselves where we start to talk from our heart, just as humans. It becomes less about difference and more about how we resonate together.
“It reminds us of our connection and how we’re all the same at the bottom of it all. It doesn’t matter where we’re from, we find these beautiful synchronicities with others in that circle and there’s always something there for each of us.”
Anita’s initial response echoes this: “It’s something to do with our isolated natures … Coming together collectively to make things, have contact with things, even if there’s no discussion in the room, there’s a real connection between people.”
I think of this as generating community connective tissue. It is hard to overstate the value of this when so many of us are being negatively impacted—directly in our lives and/or indirectly via news and social media—by discord, division, and disconnect.
Conjuring Connection
The suite of Arts Muster workshops on offer in August are not general art classes, they are all deeply grounded in each tutor’s own art practice. While all the workshops invite a connection with others through shared creativity, the particular form of the tutor’s practice shapes the other kinds of connections that might be conjured up over the two-day experience, being immersed in that tutor’s ways of being, seeing, thinking and making.
Connection to place
Greer Taylor’s words echo maiki-jane and Anita: “Our human species does seem to be having enormous difficulty relating to each other and the world we’re in, and relating to the environment, which is the very thing that gives us life.”
Connection to ‘the environment … the very thing that gives us life’ is central to Greer’s practice as an artist, sculptor, poet and question asker. This kind of connection—which Greer poetically describes as being ‘knitted into the world’—is made through being present, paying attention to what is actually happening in any given moment and recognising the ever-changing, fleeting reality of the world.
Greer’s workshop, Ephemeral Wonderings and Wanderings ‘is an opportunity to step into remembering this reality, to observe, to become a choreographer within nature’s cycles for a moment … and then to let it go …’
Greer tells me of the ‘magic, mystery and beauty’ of witnessing the transformative effects when people step into remembering this ephemeral reality—the astonishment of truly seeing and experiencing that place, in that moment.
“I can’t write a formula for what makes it happen, but somehow it does.”
Connection to self
An immediate connection to be conjured in maiki-jane blakeney’s intuitive doll-making workshop is with ourselves—through a relaxed, guided process of making a cloth doll that encompasses story, symbolism and self-expression.
The creative processes maiki-jane has evolved over a lifetime of making dolls—forms recognisable as a figure of a creature—are spaces where the maker can both meet themselves, and whatever they may need to be addressing in their lives.
“Creativity is a huge, huge part of our humanity that has brought people together throughout time … the dances we created around the fire to call in what we wanted to happen, to create our reality, our connection. It’s all about well being.”
“The making is a way that we find our way through and we can come back into a place of regulation. And then you have this beautiful object that you’ve brought into being that embodies the whole journey and story. It connects you to that time and place and remembering that learning, anytime you hold it or look at it or feel it, or whatever you do with it.”
The earliest undisputed doll—a depiction of a human being—known as Venus of Hohle, is dated c.38,000–40,000 BCE. Given the presence of dolls in the archaeological record of human history and in our magical and spiritual rituals, there is another, long, deep connection that may be conjured in maiki-jane’s doll-making workshop: one that weaves us as humans alive today into a tapestry of our ancestors and evolution.
Connection to the material world
There also happens to be another connection that weaves us into the tapestry of human evolution, present in Anita Johnson’s felt-making workshop.
Felt is recognised as the oldest constructed textile, predating weaving and knitting. The earliest archaeological evidence of felt includes prehistoric wall coverings dating to c.6500 BCE.
Anita’s workshop is an opportunity to learn the art and science of felting soft wool fibres and create your own contemporary wall hanging, as well as a 3D vessel with surface textures.
In talking with Anita about the connection and wellbeing generated when people make things together in her workshops, she draws attention to the direct connection with animals and to felt-making as a form of mindfulness practice:
“As we’re talking about interconnectedness, an aspect of felt-making is that it’s touching an animal. It’s touching the hair, the fur of an animal which could be sheep, camel, possum, all sorts of furs … a lot of people exclaim about it feeling comforting, or talk about their pets.”
“Another beautiful thing about felt making is that it requires a quietening of the body, the rhythm of the breath. It’s almost a meditative experience.
“At the beginning of the process, if you’re not mindful, if you get agitated and you’re not gentle and aware of what these tiny little wool fibres are doing underneath your hand, then you don’t actually create what you would like to create. There’s no control in the process.
“So you have to quieten your mind and be aware of what these miniscule fibres are doing. It’s a kind of awareness of the tiny miracles happening through your hands. Each tiny little fibre has a microscopic structure to it that can respond directly to your touch. It’s a beautiful moment, if you’re aware of it.”
Book A Workshop Now
There are 12 two-day Arts Muster Workshops on this year’s calendar. Come for the creativity. Stay for the connection. Choose one that appeals to your sense of experimentation, discovery and wellbeing.
Classes are strictly capped at no more than 10 students and places are filling. See the whole workshop program here or use the links below to view information about each workshop and book your spot.
Tutor Greer Taylor Ephemeral Wonderings and Wanderings
Tutor Anita Johnson Feltmaking: Sculptural textures using resists
Tutor maiki-jane blakeney Finding the dollmaker within: Intuitive cloth doll making
Tutor Sophia Parker Drawing with all the senses
Tutor Margo-Lynne Lee Freeform embroidery using traditional stitches
Tutor Esther Shelley Go with the flow: Iceland poppies intermediate watercolour course
Tutors Anandii and Marg McHugh Line, mark, colour: Your visual language
Tutor Fiona Hammond Make silk paper and create a silken treasure
Tutor Denise Stevens Miniature woven tapestry on a frame
Tutor Barbara Dawson Natural print and stitch: Creating a furoshiki
Tutor Jenny McIntosh Sketchbooking with pen and watercolour wash
Tutor Kelly Evans Slow stitch shibori and sashiko
By participating in Arts Muster Festival workshops—organised by artists for artists—you are contributing to the livelihoods of practising artists in our community.
Cultural Events
In addition to the suite of two-day arts + crafts workshops, the 2026 Arts Muster Festival program features a suite of unique cultural events taking place from Thursday 27-Sunday 30 August.
Find full information and book your tickets on the Arts Muster website.
As Samantha Tannous says, “When you immerse yourself in live cultural experiences like these, in the supportive company of others, it does something wonderful for the soul.”
