Workshops & Classes
Workshops, including professional development and studio classes, are collaborative, creative, and supported by social emotional learning and inclusive content.
Connect, collaborate, communicate: create!
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Connect, collaborate, communicate: create! 〰️〰️〰️
Workshops
School and community projects specially designed by Ali Roland.
My creative projects for schools, community programs, agencies, and public events are not one-size-fits-all. They are specifically designed to meet the needs, goals, and vision of the client. The over-arching intention and specific content is imagined collaboratively with the school, community leaders, and participants.
Together we can design a creative workshop that focuses on:
Building community
Teaching social emotional learning skills
Guiding participants to find their artistic voices
Incorporating inclusive and culturally responsive content
Offering a creative play experience that helps alleviate stress and anxiety
Creating art
Having conversations about bringing equity and social justice to your school or community
Workshops typically incorporate mixed media to create individual works or larger collaborative projects designed for site specific spaces.
My training in restorative justice practice facilitates dialogue with participants that allows everyone to share ideas, feelings, and dreams in a safe space. Workshops focus on collaboration, empathy, and supporting one another while also having fun!
Workshop fees are based on the number of participants, length of the project, location, and materials needed.
Workshop Examples for K-12
Social Justice and Community Building
Both playful and deeply reflective, this workshop includes multiple artistic approaches and media, open sharing, artistic collaboration, and focus on creating real change in our local communities.
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We start with a check-in where students support each other to share their thoughts and beliefs about social justice. This can be done verbally or in writing. Next, small groups work together, focusing on questions like: “What is restorative justice?” and “How can we help nurture it in our school and wider community?” Projects might include making individual masks, collaborating on a mural or mandala, or using graphic design principles to create a social justice poster.
Contact me for a 15-minute free workshop consultation.
Grades 5-12
2-6 day workshop options
Collaboration, Community,
and Well-Being
Numerous collaborative art and architecture projects focus on community values of compassion and inclusion.
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Students come together to plan and execute small- or large-scale creative endeavors such as: mixed-media utopian city planning (architecture), fairy structures and villages (architecture), oversized accordion-style story books, or codices (illustration and story-telling), quilt-making (sewing), murals (painting). For some projects I bring in fellow artists, for example a muralist to help design and implement a large interior or exterior mural. I also introduce artists and creators whose work inspires the assignments, such as Bodys Isek Kingelez for utopian architecture projects.
Contact me for a 15-minute free workshop consultation.
Grades 5-12
2-6 day workshop options
Design a program that is fun, experiential, and engaging.
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Design a program that is fun, experiential, and engaging. 〰️〰️〰️
Professional Development
I so often hear from adults, “If only I could go to art class like I did when I was a kid. I always looked forward to that part of my week.”
Recapturing that relaxed, playful time to explore artistically is at the heart of my professional development workshops. I work with schools, businesses, and community programs, facilitating creative, collaborative projects as the nucleus of these workshops. They focus on team building and managing stress with an art project that brings fun and well-being to all participants. The possibilities are endless. In these workshops you and your colleagues can paint murals or on canvas, collage, make prints, create with textiles, or explore different expressions using mixed media, including 3D constructions. As in any art classroom, while working together to create something, you are building community and practicing good communication.
Consider an art-focused professional development day that brings administrators, teachers, and staff together. Using principles of restorative justice and social emotional learning, I facilitate these workshops in a safe, welcoming space where laughter and playfulness help you focus on goals, personal growth, and human connection.
Professional development workshops can be full day, half day, or after school. Fees are based on the number of participants, length of the project, location, and materials needed.
Professional Development Workshop Examples
Fostering Community, Communication, and Connection
In this workshop, participants can explore a range of exciting art materials and projects. It is designed to awaken your creative soul, encourage play, strengthen team effectiveness, find pathways toward calm and centering through art and meditation, and inspire collaboration with colleagues beyond the workshop.
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We include practices that support you as an individual while communicating, sharing, and supporting one another in a creative pursuit. We start with a restorative justice practice that includes a check-in with each participant and a conversation about what defines a community, how connections are forged and nurtured, and what does play look like as an adult? The workshop will then center on such collaborative projects as mural art, architecture model building, and large-scale map making. Solo options are canvas painting or mask making, projects that center more on personal centering and self-expression.
K-12 faculty, administration, staff, and coaches
Mandala Art: Mediation and Creative Practice for Healing
This workshop fosters communication, connection, empathy, healing, and centering. We create either individual or group mandalas using paint and paint-pen on wood circles of various sizes, and often incorporate mixed media, found objects, and sand.
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The process of mandala creation is, in itself, a form of meditation. In this workshop, participants can incorporate ancient symbols, create their own designs, or both. Groups can decide to center their mandalas on themes like kindness, community, equity, school pride—whatever inspires them. Individual mandalas can relate to your life, passions, dreams, and hopes. Finished mandalas are ready to hang. Participants leave this workshop empowered and reinvigorated, ready to use the creative inspiration that has been kindled in your classrooms and workspaces.
Grades 5-12
2-6 day workshop options
Art can permeate the very deepest part of us, where no words exist.
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Art can permeate the very deepest part of us, where no words exist. 〰️〰️〰️
Agencies
For agencies and organizations, creative art workshops and programs serving children through adults with physical, cognitive, emotional, or behavioral differences.
As a trauma-informed creative art and social emotional learning facilitator and NYS Visual Art Educator, I offer creative art workshops and longer-term programs at agencies that serve children, adolescents, and adults with emotional, behavioral, and cognitive differences, intellectual and/or developmental disabilities, neurodivergence, traumatic brain injury (TBI), spinal cord injury, and physical disabilities that require an adaptive creative approach.
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I have experience working in creative art therapy programs at hospitals and agencies such as Harlem Hospital, Vassar Hospital, Hospital for Special Care, Astor Services for Children and Families, and Devereux Creative Art Program.
My agency-focused programs are designed around the number of clients, allotted time, and necessary accommodations. Blending visual, sensory, and experiential opportunities encourages artistic expression, confidence, self-efficacy, skill building, and positive affirming communication, all designed to meet the needs and abilities of each client. The joy and playfulness of making art allows clients to freely express themselves, explore, and try new things. Workshops and classes might include:
Expressive painting in watercolor, tempera, or acrylic on canvas, paper, and cardboard
Collage or assemblage with fabric, wood, and other mixed media
Creating sculptures with clay, found objects, or wood
Art allows people of all abilities to find their artistic voices, be story tellers, and unleash their imaginations.
Contact me for a 15-minute free workshop consultation.
Ali Roland is a NYS visual art PreK-12 certified educator and uses the National Core Arts Standards and the NYS Arts Learning Standards in her curriculum content and practice. She also holds a certificate in Trauma-Informed Creative Art and Sand Play Therapy from the Creative Arts Therapy Studio and Antioch University. Ali also has training in Restorative Justice Practice through the Dutchess Mediation Center in Poughkeepsie, NY. Her studio is LGBTQIA+ safe.
“Our participants in Ali’s therapeutic art classes are fully engaged and continually exploring new methods of creating and expressing themselves. Ali is patient and so very tuned-in to each individual and works to guide them at their own pace. If you are looking for a creative art therapy facilitator whose approach is warm, playful, and imaginative, while treating each client as a unique and beautiful human being, look no further than Ali!”
–Amy Recchia, Music Therapist Program Coordinator, Devereux Advanced Behavioral Health
Studio Art Classes for Children and Teens
"Making art is the clearest way in which I'm able to love myself," –Vanessa German, artist
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"Making art is the clearest way in which I'm able to love myself," –Vanessa German, artist 〰️〰️〰️
“Ali is fun and sparkly, and kids love her!”
–Betsy Jacaruso Studio
The Ali Roland Creative Arts Studio for Healing and Play located in Red Hook, NY, welcomes you to find your artistic voice and express yourself joyfully and authentically, using an abundance of materials at your disposal. My studio is inclusive and welcoming for people of all identities. My extensive background as a NYS PreK-12 visual art educator and social emotional learning facilitator informs the studio programs. I offer a rich palette of culturally responsive projects that empower children as they create work that speaks to their life experiences.
I offer fun and wildly creative studio art classes for children and teens. Every class is individually tailored to meet the interests of the young artists who attend. These classes are offered by request and will be scheduled week to week based on everyone’s availability.
By Appointment Only
- 1 hour individual art class: $100
- 2 hour classes: - $75 per child; student minimum 2, maximum 8
Ali Roland is a NYS visual art PreK-12 certified educator and uses the National Core Arts Standards and the NYS Arts Learning Standards in her curriculum content and practice. She also holds a certificate in Trauma-Informed Creative Art and Sand Play Therapy from the Creative Arts Therapy Studio and Antioch University. Ali also has training in Restorative Justice Practice through the Dutchess Mediation Center in Poughkeepsie, NY. Her studio is LGBTQIA+ safe.