Kids arts & crafts courses

Make and bind your own magical spell book with bookbinder and artist Mark Cockram.

Using a professional folding technique, your book will contain secret sections and aged papers: stained, burnt and medieval. Then learn to make a real feather quill and dragons blood ink before creating calligraphy spells using what you’ve made.

Will it be a book of dark arts or an anthology of advanced potion making?

Welcome to a world where the rules of gravity do not apply. Enter Wurkshop this Halloween, to learn about the life and work of Dutch artist M.C. Esher and replicate one of his most famous works: ‘Relativity’. Just watch out… will you be able to draw upside down?

Maurits Cornelis Escher was a Dutch artist who started creating work in the 1920s. He was fascinated in possible and impossible geometry, interlocking patterns, symmetry and infinity.

His work ‘Relativity’ has been called ‘impossible’ by some. But we know that’s not true at Wurkshop. Come and learn Escher’s skills through expert teaching from contemporary artist Beatrice Boyle . She will show you the tricks of playing with perspective and geometry in your art.

This is a course where you will use charcoal to experiment, learn highly skilled drawing techniques and be inspired by some art history all at the same time.

It’s a dusky, damp afternoon in October. The autumnal leaves rustle under your feet, and you brush by a spider’s web glistening with the recent rain. The graveyard is eerily silent. This course is not for the faint hearted. Come and feel spookily excited this half term by drawing in the cemetery.

There has been a church on the site of St. Mary’s Barnes since medieval times. Be inspired by those that have walked this ground before and the stories those tombstones tell.

You will learn highly skilled drawing and painting techniques and play with materials such as charcoal and pastel to achieve some of your best, but chilling, artwork.

This course will meet at Wurkshop and then walk to St. Mary’s Barnes Churchyard across the road. We have a large gazebo which will keep students dry if the weather is typical for October.

These clay houses make amazing low-level lamps and nightlights or an atmospheric addition to any bedroom or Halloween window display. The miniature buildings are designed to be lit with tea-lights from inside.

Toby will teach you hand-building with slabs to make the walls and roof of your house, witch’s hovel, wizard’s mansion or frog’s bungalow. You will learn tips to recreate a variety of wall textures, such as brick, stone and pebbledash. You will hand make tiles for the roof, and cut holes for windows and doors. Just watch out for the spiders and ghosts peeping through!

We will look at a number of architectural styles from gothic to Bauhaus and you will get the chance to return a week after the build to decorate your fired pieces using a range of underglazes, stains and lustres.

This is a wonderful course to learn new ceramic skills and build a piece of real beauty. Just remember the ghouls and witches will want to live there too.

In this fun and challenging class, we invite you to grab a hammer and chisel, roll up your sleeves, and think of a fitting ghoulish tribute to a classic halloween figure.

You will be learning various techniques for carving into stone but with the advantage of using aerated concrete, rather than marble or granite. This medium is much less hard, though still a challenge, and will return perfect results with the right planning and a little elbow-grease!

This year your garden or front lawn can boast a creepy gravestone to welcome in treats and ward off those pesky tricksters!

Wurkshop has yet again teamed up with local tuition provider Torchlight to combine our respective areas of expertise! Taking advantage of Torchlight director Toby's extensive experience teaching creative writing and Michael O'Mahoney's experience with art tuition to bring you … ‘Write, Illustrate, Publish'.

This Autumn on these two day courses, students will learn key creative writing skills with a focus on unreliable narrators, dynamic openings and new vocabulary. In combination with this, they will also illustrate their stories with Michael's help, working with collage, print and watercolour ink drawings before learning to bind their book at the end. A truly educational and creative course!

As it is Halloween, we will be penning chilling stories and the writing focus will be starter-goes for building tension - all to deliver that all-important shock!

Graffiti artist Danny, aka Zinc Styles, returns to Wurkshop making graffiti art on canvas. Danny will introduce you to various styles of graffiti and street art, teaching how to achieve various effects using spray paints outside on board.

At the end of the class, you will have a finished canvas to take home. This course is suitable for students who have attended previous graffiti courses at Wurkshop as well as complete beginners.

Danny studied Contemporary Art Practice at the University of Leeds and has since worked as a professional street artist worldwide.

As we will be using spray cans we recommend not wearing your best outfit (including shoes) as the acrylic paint in the sprays is very tough to remove. They will be wearing our work-coats but…

Imagine a pointed, wicker lantern, hanging from the end of a willow stick, slung over your shoulder as you walk through the streets trick or treating. Perched on top of the lantern sits a large, spindly spider - throwing shadows of its fantastically creepy silhouette over the street around you. People may be too spooked to come too close.

With the help of willow weaver Judith Needham you can make this ultimate addition to any Halloween costume a reality! Join us for the day and leave with your own All Hallows lantern to light up your night.

Please bring a packed lunch.

Join our crafting expert, Kris Machin, to make your very own monster models using modelling clay, wire and hand-sewn outfits and accessories.

It's up to you whether to make a skeleton or a witch, a monster or a ghoul, or something else entirely!

Once made, your creepy creations can dance a grim fandango, hang from the window or join you as a dread mascot on a trick-or-treating trail.

Hubble bubble! In the Halloween special of this course, we will mix, squelch, explode and boil. 

Many aspiring perfumers, chemists or chefs started with the art of the potion. But this course is not childhood potions with mud or grass. We will create things you can use at home, or gift to others to enjoy. There will be suitable amounts of ‘slime’ and ‘gore’ though… it is Halloween after all.

Come and create some magic, arouse your senses and keep the secrets you learn to yourselves.

Passion, Life, Death and Love. A healthy dose of the surreal and an incredible eye for the exotic, unusual and beautiful: Frida Kahlo is our kind of artist and she is the subject of this phenomenal course in tribute to her individual painting style.

Join artist Beatrice Boyle for your chance to paint and draw in the style of this iconic artist. Expect to use lots of colour and to carry home your own Kahlo painting by the end of the class.

We couldn't resist holding this class at Halloween, a time of year immediately associated with Mexico, day of the dead and the star of the show, Frida Kahlo!

By the gentle glow of candlelight, join artist Beatrice Boyle to paint bones, skulls and pumpkins using acrylic paints.

Beautiful, gothic and glowing the finished pieces will be fantastic to behold. Not only is this course fabulously creepy but the high contrast candle light is also a deeply traditional and highly effective way to learn observational painting techniques, seeing tone, contrast and shade.

Learn how to mix colour and leave with a finished masterpiece.

Every witch or wizard needs a special, magic spoon for stirring their potions. In this course, you will make just that.
 
Come and split, carve, axe, cut and scoop to make one of the first things humans ever created: the spoon. The oldest spoon recorded is from Ancient Egypt, dated from 10,000BC, and the word ‘spoon’ comes from the Old English meaning ‘chip of wood’.

You may have many a wooden spoon at home, but carving your own caldron spoon is a real wonder.
 
Coppicer Suzy Williams looks after woodland in Berkshire and will teach students about different types of wood and how to source your own to carve. 
 
Come and learn a new hobby you can take to your very own potion dungeon - whittle the hours away with this highly tactile, satisfying craft. 
 
Because of the hand strength required to carve, children need to be aged 7 upwards. We will be using the proper tools so non-cut gloves will be provided. 

Broomsticks and magic are inextricably linked in the Muggle mind. So roll up, aspiring witches and wizards for our broom making workshop this Halloween. (Muggles are also welcome). 

What you make will both be comfortable and aerodynamic. It will also be perfect to hide in a Muggle household, and use to actually sweep, if you’re trying to hide your true identity. 

Besom brooms are a true art that have been made by wizards and Muggles alike for centuries. Join coppicer Suzy Williams for an afternoon of magic where you will use axes and bend birch twigs to create your new ride. 

Disclaimer: Once you have finished your broom, it will be up to you to cast your desired spells on it. You could also attend our potion workshop on Tuesday 26th October for new spells and tips. 

There will be a fly-by around Barnes Pond 4.30-5pm after the workshop. Please invite your parents if they know about your magic roots. Pickup will be from by the OSO Theatre, Barnes.

The myth has it that Stingy Jack was an Irishman who tried to trick the devil to make money. When Jack died, he wasn’t allowed into heaven, or even hell. Jack was sentenced to wander the world for eternity. And how else could people frighten away his wandering soul? By carving demonic faces into old turnips, of course.

As Irish immigrants started settling in the United States, they brought the tradition of carving ‘jack-o-lanterns’ with them. But turnips were in short supply in America, so they used the native pumpkin instead. The idea was incorporated into Halloween, to scare away all the souls returning from the otherworld.

Join Wurkshop & Two Peas in a Pod for this exciting day of pumpkin carving. This is for adults & children - bring your family or friends to create magical, mystical, ghoulish faces to frighten all the souls of South West London.

Buy your pumpkin from Two Peas in a Pod and carving is £5 per person. We will set up a gazebo outside next to the grocer and provide all the tools you’ll need. There are no bookable slots - just turn up between 10am-2pm and bring your imagination.