AIM for Art School is a year-long course for individuals to explore ways and approaches to making art. There will be opportunities to engage with professional artists, meet other AIM artists, visit exhibitions and learn new skills.
The art school takes place a the Arnolfini who provides support and opportunities to engage in their exhibitions and learn the different ways contemporary artists make art. We invite established artists and facilitators working within the contemporary arts to lead sessions and share skills, alongside our team of facilitators who regularly lead the sessions.
2024
Our 2024 course saw us welcome the renowned Adebayo Bolaji in June, where we worked on a community collective mural painting, which took place alongside his show ‘In Praise of Beauty’ at Arnolfini. This piece covered many walls of the community space and was a great space for our artists to work together on a collaborative artwork, which responded to what beauty means to them. You can see more of these workshop sessions here.
Our work experience students Maisie and Elisha also visited the Art School at Arnolfini, and spent time working closely with participants, building relationships and getting to know the group better. They ran an incredible masking making workshop, inspired by Barbara Walker’s exhibition, exploring themes of visibility and identity. The mask making represented how they see themselves, and how they’d like to be seen by others. The workshop was playful, using a broad range of materials to make some extraordinary creations.
2025
In 2025, artist and sculptor Rod Harris led a clay workshop with the group. This session was a creative journey, starting with the smallest piece of clay, the work evolved into a vibrant imagined landscape. The results included known landmarks; skyscrapers, roads, buildings, machinery. The work continued to evolve throughout the workshop, eventually transforming into a winding reptile. Read more here.
In July 2025, we had an Open exhibition hosted at Arnolfini. This event was an opportunity for the Artists to display their work, and showcase in Arnolfini for members of the public, staff, friends and family. The event was a celebration of the fantastic work produced as part of Art School, and their commitment to building and nurturing their practice.
Currently, our Art School artists have been building amazing textures on their building-inspired sculptures using paper, tissue paper, and mod-roc — and they’ve now started adding colour and surface details.
These 3D sculptures are nearly finished, and they’ll soon be brought to life in a collaborative group animation, will be a first for Art School. We can’t wait to see it all come together.
AIM 