Connect The Dots provides creative arts programmes that aim to build individual capacity, strengthen neighbourhoods,
and facilitate true connections between people of all ages.
Click on a dot to read more about a project...
Creative arts workshops that focus on building confidence and leadership capabilities in girls aged 10-14.
Tell me more about Girls To The Front
Intergenerational creative arts workshops that aim to encourage cross-societal conversations and relationships, bringing women across generations together.
Tell me more about Mind the Gap
Workshops that provide art-making opportunities, cultural exchange, and connections, for people of migrant and refugee backgrounds.
Tell me more about Make/Do
If you would like to participate in one of our programmes or if you would like more information please contact us on:
In these free workshops for girls aged 10-14, we explore issues by experimenting with a range of creative techniques and processes facilitated by professional artists.
Through a process of conversation, self-reflection, debate, and thinking through making, Girls to the Front culminates in an interactive, participatory event or exhibition curated by the girls to expose the creative process and their personal development.
The themes and workshops are designed to develop the girls team work skills, leadership skills, and build confidence. Art is a tool which we believe can provide transformational opportunities for these young women. Art can enable this age group to build their own identity separate from their peers and their family, and foster a sense of self.
Read about Girls To the Front on Stuff.co.nz
You can also watch Andrea Gaskin and Selina Anderson, founders of Connect the Dots Charitable Trust, talk about Girls to the Front, which encourages leadership and confidence through the creative arts for girls aged 10-14 years old.
Lydia Barker - Producer/ Interviewer
Lydia Lewis - Sound
Jessie Chiang - Camera
Mind the Gap is an intergenerational creative arts programme that brings together 15-18 year old young women, and elderly people from the local community. This programme encourages conversations and relationships that are cross-societal, across generations, and across backgrounds. Through this we believe participants will feel more connections with their community, with themselves and who they are.
Using art making as a tool for exploration, participants will explore their personal identity, social identity, and their place in the wider community.
Make/Do is an applied arts project that aims to create a space for cultural exchange and connections.
Developed to provide art-making opportunities for people of migrant and refugee backgrounds, Make/Do is a series of textile arts workshops that both acknowledges the cultural traditions of its participants, as well as introduces them to Maori, Pacifica and European art-making techniques and traditions.
Connect the Dots believe art is a tool to bring communities together to share skills and make connections. As well as exploring textile art techniques, such as silkscreen printing, embroidery, tivaevae and weaving, Make/Do also introduces activities that support literacy development, thereby giving participants the opportunity to gain knowledge and reduce their social isolation.