How can engaging with art support wellbeing? Get a fresh perspective on student and school wellbeing planning for 2027 with contemporary art and NGV Triennial.
Designed for teachers, education support staff and school mental health and wellbeing leaders, this professional learning program offers practical, arts-based strategies for supporting wellbeing in schools.
The program commences with an artist talk and hands-on, clay-based workshop led by exhibiting Triennial artist, Kohl Tyler. Tyler’s practice invites participants to slow down, engage with material processes, and embrace making as a space for curiosity, experimentation and reflection. In the afternoon, participants will take part in reflective discussion and art-based wellbeing activities in the Gallery with NGV Educators, drawing inspiration from the NGV Triennial.
All materials are supplied. Morning tea and lunch are included. Please indicate any dietary requirements when booking.
- Explore arts-based approaches that support wellbeing, curiosity, resilience, and self-expression in educational settings.
- Experience the mindful and reflective benefits of creative artmaking through hands-on engagement with clay.
- Develop ideas and strategies for contemporary art experiences that foster wellbeing across diverse classrooms and learning communities.
- 1.1 Physical, social and intellectual development and characteristics of students
- 2.1 Content and teaching strategies of the teaching area
- 3.3 Use teaching strategies
- 4.1 Support student participation
- 6.2 Engage in professional learning and improve practice
Kohl Tyler (b. 1993) is an artist from Aotearoa/New Zealand who has been based in Naarm/Melbourne since 2018. Through her art practice, she explores ideas about how things change over time, how people and the natural world are connected, and how sculpture can help us imagine possible futures. Inspired by both the physical and less visible aspects of the natural world, her work reflects on environmental change and explores what future ecosystems and materials might look like. She works mainly with ceramics, and also creates watercolour paintings and collaborative, community-based projects.
Her work is held in the collections of the National Gallery of Victoria (VIC), Geelong Gallery (VIC), and the Gippsland Art Gallery (VIC). In 2026, she presented work at the Aotearoa Art Fair (NZ), Three Days of Design Copenhagen (DK), and Melbourne Art Fair (VIC), and will be exhibiting in the upcoming National Gallery of Victoria Triennial (AU) and Sydney Contemporary (NSW). She completed a Bachelor of Fine Art at Whitecliffe College of Art and Design in 2016 and was awarded the Artist Alliance Graduate Award that same year. In 2017, she won the Estuary Art and Ecology Award at Malcolm Smith Gallery in Auckland, NZ. In 2025, she won the Klytie Pate Ceramics People’s Choice Prize and was a finalist in the National Gallery of Victoria’s Rigg Design Prize. She has presented solo exhibitions in Aotearoa and Australia, including: Of Bodies into Novel Shapes, MARS Gallery, Melbourne, VIC (2025); To Return To, Craft Victoria, Melbourne, VIC; All is Ephemeral, FELTspace, Adelaide, SA (2024); and Moving Past the Sun, Weasel Gallery, Hamilton, NZ (2020). Recent group exhibitions include: Level Two, Chalk Horse Gallery, Sydney, NSW (2026); Ceramics Now, MARS Gallery, Melbourne, VIC (2024); and Ceramics, Australian Galleries, Melbourne, VIC (2024). In 2022, she presented Offerings, a social art installation held at the UNESCO heritage-listed Carlton Gardens in Naarm, Australia, supported by the City of Melbourne Art Grants.