Barbara Nell is using art to build confidence among school leavers with special needs and fostering healthy relationships among young people isolated from mainstream schools. Photo: John Thistleton.
Barbara Nell can put on a show. An art teacher for 40 years and the founder of art workshop Creative Space in Goulburn, Barbara has mounted exhibitions and undertaken prominent murals, including the one adorning the rear of the Goulburn Specialists Centre.
Now she is project managing another show, more ambitious perhaps than ever before, because she is relying on inexperienced young people, socially isolated through their locations, or through disability.
Four months into her 12-month youth opportunities project entitled, ‘Here I am – emerging artists’, Barbara has taken in homeschoolers, on their own each day meeting the minimum education requirements but not interacting socially with other people. She is also working with young school leavers with disabilities.
Under the auspices of Community Plus, an innovative Goulburn charity and wellspring of projects such as Goulburn-themed Monopoly, and the Southern Tablelands Community Foundation, Barbara has a $50,000 NSW Government grant to deliver her project at no cost to participants.
“A couple of them are homeschooled because they have always done homeschooling and are on a property (out of town) somewhere,” she said. “Goulburn has a really big group of homeschoolers. The average age I have is 15. They are vulnerable because they are isolated.”
After their schooling was interrupted by the COVID-19 pandemic, some students never returned to school and stayed at home without a pattern or rhythm.
As part of the youth opportunities project she is also introducing a fresh cohort of 16- to 24-year-olds to an online digital creation course to be run by Victoria Waghorn, a content producer with video and photo editing skills and digital marketing experience. The class will gain storytelling skills in the digital space.
School teaching has given Barbara vast experience of working with children with special needs. Highly gifted, shy and short on confidence they will nevertheless progress when given the opportunity.
She has a different approach today than in days past when teachers told students what to do. These days she is a backseat driver in her light-filled studio, keeping stimulating ideas in front of classes.
Dominique, Charlotte and Cara in an art class at Creative Space in Goulburn, where a 12-month youth project is underway to broaden their skills and build their confidence. Photo: Barbara Nell.
“I cannot be bossy teacher at the front of the room,” she said. “I must be subtle and offer different things. They are making the choices.
And they all decided, ‘We would like to do lino printing,’” she said.
A recurring conversation from all those years teaching returns as she contemplates the next 12 months, and she will repeat it many times: “You thought you couldn’t do that before, look at you now.”
Change can be as subtle as a girl switching from pencil to charcoal in her artwork and improving exponentially.
Some of her participants may come in with their heads down and be difficult to engage with, but gradually they come out and blossom. Through art, the two groups are building confidence in themselves, making decisions for themselves, lifting their heads and looking at one another’s work.
“They are chat, chat, chat, so this is great,” Barbara said. “We have one (person) in Laggan, one in Bannaby, someone out at Yarra. They’re on properties here and there, a couple in town. They are seeing each other and each other’s work develop.”
Working in collaboration with Right to Work, a social enterprise in Goulburn for young adults with autism and intellectual disabilities, Barbara is helping those struggling on their own, with multiple health issues. “To come to the art class is a really good thing because you get to make clay works and get a chance to practise your manners,” she said.
The project will culminate in a public exhibition of visual arts in April next year and each participant has a role to play. “Exhibitions look easy, but gee there is a lot of work,” Barbara said.
Barbara Nell completed this mural several years ago. She had to wait for when the temperature was 14 degrees Celsius for the paint to stick. She also had to work in the shade. She has a more complex arts project these days. Photo: Barbara Nell.
“If you have anxiety, it’s hell to have an exhibition. An artist spends their time focussed on their work by themselves,” she said. “There is no way around that, except these people have each other, and we are making it together. The putting it out there with support and celebrating that is a really powerful thing.”
Rejecting any notion she cannot teach someone with special needs, she says: “Just because you are not verbal, or this or this or this it doesn’t mean we are not going to extend you in some form, or we are not going to give you the experience of something new – everybody has the right to work.”
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