Past Projects
Past Projects
Below are a selection of large scale teaching projects we’ve completed
WOMADelaide’s KidZone
At WOMADelaide KidZone 2025, Studio Ruby Chew delivered a vibrant, hands-on creative activation that combined playful design with meaningful participation. Across the three days, families were welcomed into a colourful 12 × 6 metre workshop tent transformed with suspended pencil sculptures and vibrant décor, creating an environment that celebrated imagination and curiosity.
Each day offered a new making adventure: Day 1 invited budding artists to create My WOMAD Passport - personalised zines capturing festival memories through drawing, pattern, collage and storytelling. Day 2 explored global music through imagination with Invent Your Own Instrument, where sculptural forms were crafted from recycled materials, reinterpreting instruments from around the world. Day 3 celebrated rhythm and colour with Raise Your Dance Flag!, as children designed collaged festival flags to wave and share joy across the site.
In total, around 1,500 participants engaged with the activation, with many families returning across multiple days to expand their creative journey. By centring experimentation and play, using sustainable and repurposed materials and highlighting cultural diversity and inclusivity, the activation strongly aligned with WOMAD’s ethos of global celebration, sustainability, and community connection.
Dream BIG
Children’s Festival
Adelaide Festival Centre
2025
DreamBIG Children’s Festival is South Australia's premier arts festival for children and schools, held biennially at the Adelaide Festival Centre and various venues across the city. It’s the longest running, curated children’s festival in the world, celebrating its 50th year in 2025.
The festival features a diverse program of performances, workshops, and interactive experiences, including Theatre, Dance, Music, and Visual Arts, all designed to spark creativity and inspire young audiences. With a strong focus on imagination, inclusivity, and meaningful engagement, DreamBIG encourages children to explore the world around them through the arts.
For the 2025 program, Ruby wrote the Visual Arts section of the Teaching & Learning Resources. Drawing on her experience as a visual artist, teaching artist, and Master of Teaching degree, she crafted an exciting and imaginative resource that empowers teachers to deliver classroom units aligned with the festival's themes, fostering artistic exploration and deep engagement in the arts.
Ruby is also set to develop and facilitate Visual Art workshops during the festival next year and with her DJ hat on, will produce a track for the festival's birthday party parade celebrations.
River Magic
State Library of South Australia x Nature Festival
October 4 & 5, 2025
River Magic was a collaborative, large-scale art activation designed and delivered by Studio Ruby Chew for Nature Festival 2025 in the Mortlock Wing at the State Library of South Australia.
Anchored by the festival’s theme of Flow, the project celebrated the River Torrens through five interactive artmaking stations, each contributing to a single evolving 12.5 meter central collaborative artwork. The activation was designed as a drop-in experience for all ages, encouraging participants to explore place, imagination and connection through art.
The project was built with clear learning outcomes, differentiated pathways and scaffolded art techniques to support a wide range of learners. Each station explored a different visual language or process.
Participants contributed their creations directly to the river installation, which expanded throughout the weekend. The layered approach allowed for multiple entry points supporting younger participants, neurodivergent learners, and adults engaging at different skill levels.
Over the course of the event, hundreds of participants contributed to the growing river artwork layering flora, fauna, abstract pattern, language and human interaction into a vibrant collective landscape. The project demonstrated the power of participatory making in creating shared experiences and deepening community connection to place.
Unley Coffee Fiesta
Tasting Australia x City of Unley
May 4, 2025
Double Shot! Coffee Fiesta was a large-scale community art activation held at Soldiers Memorial Gardens in Unley, designed and delivered by Studio Ruby Chew as part of Tasting Australia 2025.
Anchored by the festival’s celebration of coffee culture and community, the project transformed a 9 x 3 meter marquee space into a lively drop-in art zone for all ages. Participants were invited to create imaginative pop-up coffee cup artworks, dreaming up quirky characters and elaborate worlds ready to spring out of their cups.
The activation was specifically designed for the event’s theme, encouraging considered illustration to express ideas while offering multiple levels of engagement - from quick, spontaneous drawing to more layered, detailed creations.
To support a broader range of learners, Studio Ruby Chew also provided a personalised Coffee Fiesta colouring sheet illustrated by Ruby, for very young budding artists. These sheets could be coloured, cut, and collaged into cup designs, acting as a gentle springboard for participants who felt reluctant to start. The layered approach supported a range of learners and skill levels, ensuring the activation remained inclusive and welcoming.
Over the course of the event, hundreds of participants engaged with the space, leaving with unique hand-made keepsakes while contributing to a vibrant collective atmosphere. The project demonstrated the power of creative participation in transforming a public event into a shared artistic experience.
Delivering Effective Arts Learning (DEAL)
DEAL was a professional learning program in arts curriculum for primary teachers in South Australian government schools (IED category 1–4). It connected professional teaching artists and classroom teachers to address and explore the Australian Curriculum: The Arts.
The program ran annually across two terms and comprised of a one day professional development (PD) intensive followed by a series of one on one deliveries in the classroom or further PD intensives with teaching artists. The teacher then lead a creative class project, applying their new learning supported by the teaching artist.
Ruby worked as lead artist for the Visual Arts portion of this program from 2020-22, delivering tailored educational experiences for 13 teachers across 6 different schools including regional areas. Outcomes from this program included teachers’ depth of knowledge, skills, techniques and confidence in Art and the Australian Arts Curriculum, development of teachers’ capacity to deliver engaging and challenging arts programs and overall, improved student learning outcomes.
Now adapted to the Artists in Schools program, Ruby continues to work regularly as a contractor for Carclew in schools across South Australia.
Children’s Artspace
Adelaide Festival Centre
Kaleidoscope: Playing with Colour
2021-2022
Adelaide Festival Centre works with local visual artists who collaborate with children to create new artwork and unique experiences. Each exhibition provides young people with the opportunity to engage with diverse arts practices, learn new techniques, and ask challenging questions. The Children’s Artspace run both in-school and in-gallery workshops and produce curated professional exhibitions of children’s artwork.
In 2021, Ruby was the first artist to work on this program, delivering art experiences inspired by her own arts practice for students at Keller Road Primary School and Hackham West Primary School. These resulted in a final exhibition, Kaleidoscope: Playing with Colour, which opened in 2022 and was the first exhibition launching Adelaide Festival Centre’s new gallery, Children’s Artspace.
Funded by the Adelaide Festival Centre Foundation, Children’s Artspace is actively facilitating local, national, and international partnerships and is run in collaboration with Adelaide Festival Centre’s centrED program with support from the South Australian Department for Education.
Artist in Residence Positions
St. Ignatius' College Artist In Residence, photo by Helen Orr
Concordia College Artist In ResidenceRuby has completed numerous Artist in Residence (AIR) positions at schools across South Australia and overseas.
This includes AIR positions at Klemzig Primary School (2024), Ocean View College (2023), Warradale Primary School (2020), Concordia College (2018), for Marryatville High School’s Gifted and Talented Program (2012 & 2016), the International School of Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia (2012) and St Ignatius’ College (2011).
Each residency has been unique; differentiated to the needs and outcomes of each school and its students. Outcomes have included SALA and whole school exhibitions, public art creation and technical Painting, Drawing and Sculpture techniques.
Cabaret Life Drawing
Adelaide Cabaret Festival
2022, 2024 & 2025
Cabaret Life Drawing is an immersive creative experience presented by Adelaide Cabaret Festival in partnership with Adelaide Central School of Art. Blending the energy of live performance with the intimacy of observational drawing, the event invites participants to pick up a charcoal stick, settle in with a sketchpad, and turn their gaze toward the stage.
Accompanied by a live jazz band setting the mood, participants are guided through a series of fun, experimental and technical drawing exercises designed to capture the alluring forms and fashions of cabaret.
Written and delivered by Studio Ruby Chew, the program is designed to accommodate a broad scope of learners - from those who simply want to have a go with no experience or pressure, to those with some drawing background who are keen to be gently challenged with new techniques. The emphasis is on playful experimentation and enjoyment, ensuring that everyone feels welcomed and engaged at their own pace.
Over the course of each event, the room transforms into a collective studio, with participants sketching in real time as cabaret muses pose, perform and inspire! The result is a celebration of art, music, and performance that merges audience and stage into one vibrant creative moment.
