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.

Every Saturday, we host free workshops inspired by our exhibitions and ongoing programs. This January, join our special Saturday series with Nurdan Ariöz, where participants explore the unseen stories of the city. Through collage, drawing, color, writing, and intuitive movement, these workshops transform personal memories and fleeting moments into a collective “stories archive,” a living artwork in which every contribution is preserved. Participants also create small keepsakes to take home, reflecting on their experience and the shared creative process.

Alongside our recurring Saturday workshops and the January series, the program includes CLiP open sessions, community-led projects, and learning moments that position the space as a meeting point for experimentation, exchange, and collective imagination.

Acts of Protest Archive

Acts of Protest Archive is a participatory, living archive that invites visitors to reflect on protest as a personal, collective, and everyday act.This activity is free and open to all in our Education & Participation Space. Protest does not only take place in the streets, it can be loud or quiet, visible or intimate, fleeting or sustained.

In dialogue with the exhibitions I Breathe, You Breathe by donna Kukama and Spirit Faith Grace Rage by Marilyn Nance, this activity asks how breath, presence, belief, resistance, and care shape our ways of protesting and being together.

Visitors are invited to write or draw their own contribution to the archive, responding to the question:

How do you protest, and in what way?

Contributions can take many forms, statements, gestures, reflections, drawings, or fragments, acknowledging that protest can be part of daily life, inner conviction, collective action, or quiet refusal.