Bringing art home

Elmwood

Community members and passersby may have noticed a colourful new addition to the corner of Henderson Highway and Cobourg Avenue.

Over the past six months, Next Door Neighbour Studio (232 Henderson Hwy.) has become a hub for creatively inclined folks in Elmwood and beyond. The art space, housed in a former H&R Block building, is the brainchild of artists and Glenelm residents Jill McGillivray and Helga Jakobson.

“We aren’t literally next-door neighbours, but we are across-the-back-lane neighbours, which doesn’t quite have the same ring,” Jakobson said with a laugh, adding the two met in art school years ago. “We have a very long friendship that has been very lovely.”

For the past 10 years, McGillivray has been teaching art classes in her home, while Jakobson had been teaching classes at the Winnipeg Art Gallery and acting as executive director of ArtsJunktion. The two began talking about how they could build on what they’d already been doing and create something special in their own community.

“When Jill was talking about expanding, I thought there was an opportunity to bring in the energy I wanted to express in the community and create a space for people of all ages to get creative in,” Jakobson said. “This is an opportunity to do this in my neighbourhood, to work with and support Jill and other artists in the community.”

Between the two of them, Next Door Neighbour Studio regularly hosts semester-long art classes for all ages, as well as mini-courses, birthdays, summer camps, and more, with a focus on processed-based education.

“The focus is more on the exploration of materials over the final product,” McGillivray explained. “We focus on playing with material. We do a lot of play-based art. For example, we do no-paintbrush painting, so using anything but a paintbrush to paint. The results can be really surprising, and there’s so much learning in the process. And through that, we can teach skills.”

“We do medium-focused classes, like pottery or textiles. But then we also have these less medium-specific classes, where it’s more of a survey of all kinds of media,” Jakobson said, adding that classes often incorporate sustainability, as well. “My day job is at The Forks as its sustainability co-ordinator. We’ve been able to teach about bird collision and window decoration. I was able to run a nature-based art camp, teaching people how to utilize nature as an art medium.”

While anyone can take courses or workshops at Next Door Neighbour Studio, both McGillivray and Jakobson are happy to see the space embraced by their own neighbours.

“We’ve also had a lot of kids who are bussed out to various schools who maybe don’t get a chance to connect with other kids in the neighbourhood, and they’re connecting with those kids here, which has been a really positive thing, bringing people in the neighbourhood together in a different way,” McGillivray said.

“We’ve been able to provide a space for a local art group to put on an art show for all ages, we’ve had workshops in here by artists who all live within three blocks of the studio,” Jakobson added.

But that’s not to say that Next Door Neighbour is limiting itself to its brick-and-mortar location, either.

“We do workshops, sometimes in partnership with other businesses and organizations,” Jakobson said. “We did one at Pine Ridge Hollow, and we’ve run a few art clubs at Modern Electric Lunch, so you can have a glass of wine and learn how to weave, things like that.”

“It’s been great,” McGillivray said. “A lot of people who were coming to my classes transferred over. We also get a lot of people who are discovering us driving by or word of mouth. Now that we’re here, it’s been growing.”

Visit nextdoorneighbourstudio.com for more information.