Space for Education and Participation

A New Space for Education & Participation

We are proud to announce the brand-new Education & Participation Space at Kunstinstituut Melly: a vibrant and flexible environment dedicated to learning, meeting, creativity, and community exchange.

Situated on the ground floor of our building, this space is designed as a visible and active pillar of our institution, ensuring that education, knowledge sharing, and collective learning remain central to our mission. Whether you’re a child, student, artist, educator, or visitor, this is a space for curiosity, care, and connection.

Built with core values of inclusivity, accessibility, flexibility, and ecological awareness, the space features organic forms, natural materials, and a modular layout that easily adapts to different programs and needs. It is a place where ideas grow, people gather, and creativity flourishes.

Free Saturday Workshops & Collective Learning

Since the opening of our Education & Participation Space, Kunstinstituut Melly has become a lively setting for workshops, talks, and collective learning. Artists, educators, and participants of all ages and backgrounds come together to explore creativity as a shared, evolving practice.

Our Saturday workshops provide a space for experimentation and connection. In January 2026, during Nurdan Ariöz’s workshops, participants engaged with storytelling, visual arts, color, drawing, writing, and movement, contributing to a collective story archive: a living artwork that preserves each person’s presence and voice. In February 2026, during Sabrina Schoop’s workshops in Poetic Diaspora, participants explore language, words, and personal memories, creating poetic fragments that weave together identity, memory, and multilingual expression. In March 2026, the workshop series Tip of the Tongue, led by Veronika Babayan, explores multilingualism, migration, and memory through dried fruit. Participants create fruit chains inspired by expressions from different languages, reflecting on care, loss, humour, and change. Language becomes something you can see, touch, and assemble. Come experience a language that cannot be expressed in words!

Nurdan Ariöz will once again lead the free Saturday workshops in April 2026. What You Haven’t Said Yet is an open spoken word workshop in which personal stories are made visible through image, text, and voice. The workshop series consists of three sessions that can be followed independently, in which participants explore different ways of writing: from collage, from a personal object, and through an ode to an unseen talent.

The space itself acts as a hub for learning, encounter, and collective imagination, where participants meet, share ideas, and experiment together. Whether through individual or collaborative practice, the workshops make the city’s unseen stories visible and memorable.

Alongside the Saturday workshops, the Education & Participation Space hosts CLiP Open sessions, community-led projects, and other creative learning opportunities. It functions as a hub for encounter, exchange, and collective imagination, where participants explore, share, and connect through creativity.

CLiP #7: The Garage School of Prepping Otherwise

Collective Learning in Practice (CLiP) is the successor to Kunstinstituut Melly’s successful Work-Learn Project (2018) and has run six editions to date. CLiP gives participants the opportunity to study contemporary art issues and work with our team to make the institution more publicly accessible. Each edition supports 10–14 young participants with the tools, skills, and inspiration to grow as individuals, decision-makers, and professionals through a six-month study period. This year, CLiP returns with its seventh edition: The Garage School of Prepping Otherwise. Over six months (October 2025 – March 2026), a group of Rotterdam-based participants aged 17–24 is exploring what it means to survive together in times of global crises, militarisation, and social inequity.