Festive Opening: Holiday Passport 2026 – Doing as Drawing

From 18 July to 30 August, children and their families are invited to explore Holiday Passport 2026 at Kunstinstituut Melly. The program is open daily from 11 am to 6 pm, with a festive opening on Saturday 18 July at 12:30 pm.

Doing as Drawing

Join us this summer at Kunstinstituut Melly and discover the many possibilities of thinking through drawing. From 18 July to 30 August, children aged 4 to 12 can take part, free of charge, alongside their parents or carers, in an adventurous art programme full of play, imagination and discovery.

Be inspired by the exhibition Draw Withdraw Redraw, where drawing is so much more than just a pencil line on paper. Pick a card, follow a trail, build a story or discover how small choices can spark new ideas.

A world full of surprises awaits in the Space for Education and Participation. Help build a giant tent where you can explore, play and withdraw for a while. Create a secret garden for yourself or for someone else. Bring your drawings to life, invent new stories and discover what’s hidden in the many drawers, cupboards and secret nooks of the space. Behind every drawer lies a new task, question or surprise.

There’s no set route and no right or wrong answer. Follow your curiosity, try things out and respond to what others have left behind. Our art mediators will help you get started and invite you to explore the exhibition too.

PROGRAMME

During the festive opening, Conform Cox will kick off the first of three Free Saturday workshops, Distorting Improvement. Together, we’ll draw, imagine, and rethink the world around us, taking inspiration from the exhibition Draw Withdraw Redraw.

Each workshop explores a question about how we might improve our lives and the spaces we inhabit. In the first session, we’ll reimagine the human form; in the second, we’ll rethink our own living spaces; and in the third, we’ll turn our attention to Rotterdam and imagine new possibilities for the city.

What would you like to improve, and can you think beyond the current frameworks of life and society? What is an important issue for you, and how might you redesign the world to address it? How can you visualise your unique ideas? Illustrator Conform Cox will guide you through these questions and also help you with any queries you may have about drawing. In this way, during each workshop, you’ll build a part of your own alternative world, constructed layer by layer. You can also take part in just one workshop.

WORKSHOP 1

The participants will create drawings based on the theme ‘Distorting Improvement’. They will be given philosophical questions to work with: what would you change about a person to make the world a better place, and what would that look like? They will then be asked to visualise this philosophical question by drawing one or more characters. What does that less-than-ideal trait or limb look like, or do you actually need an extra limb? People are encouraged to pose for one another to help create a character. They are challenged to depict things that you wouldn’t normally see, but might only be able to hear or put into words. For the younger participants, this question is less complicated and will focus very much on outward appearances.

Finally, the characters will be cut out and a group photo will be taken of all the drawings together.