Collaborative Art Making Workshop and Yarn 2025

Join artists Merindah Funnell and Emma Hicks for a hands-on workshop that invites you to consider your own personal connections to Country and place. In this creative session, you'll share memories and stories tied to a body of water that is important to you. Work with shape, colour, writing, drawing, paper and paint markers to contribute to a larger evolving collective artwork displayed throughout the exhibition. You will also have the opportunity to create an artwork to take home and one to exchange as a gift.

Through this workshop, we'll reflect on our individual and collective connections to
waterways and how they impact our lives.

Participants will have the opportunity to:

• Create art that is inspired by personal memories and stories related to water
• Add your creation to a collaborative wall piece that will evolve during the exhibition
• Take home an artwork you create
• Exchange your artwork with an artwork from the gift pool
• Engage in conversations about the exhibition Echoes of Light: Our Connection Through Waterways with the artists, Merindah and Emma
  

This is a chance to contribute to a larger community artwork that reflects both personal and shared connections to place, community and care. We also invite you to reflect on social and environmental issues that are important to you, especially those connected to water and ecosystems.

Artist bios

Merindah Funnell is a proud Tubba-Gah woman from the Wiradjuri nation. As both an artist and educator, she shares her deep cultural knowledge and connection to Country through her unique artistic style. Merindah's work spans from large-scale street art murals to delicate, embroidered paintings, as well as powerful illustrations. Using striking colours and bold line work, she both honours her ancestral land and celebrates First Nations culture.

Dr Emma Hicks is a Sydney-based artist, writer, and educator of Gamilaroi and European heritage. She has a multidisciplinary practice covering film, sculpture, installation, drawing and writing. Emma works in a responsive way to site or concept with connection to place and personal storytelling as recurring themes in her practice.